LUBBOCK, Texas — On January 29, the Lubbock Police Department, the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Lubbock County Sheriff’s Office joined forces to prevent fatal crashes. After a little over a month, the task force pulled over 750 people within two days of operation.
Sgt. Johnny Bures with DPS said the location of law enforcement on Lubbock highways is intentional.
“Really looking at those target areas,” Bures said. “Where we’ve had a lot of crashes, you know we had 51 fatalities in Lubbock last year and so looking at that, we’ve been trying to see where are some of the problem areas at?”
On the first day of operation, January 29, LPD Public Information Officer Allison Matherly said 487 traffic stops were made. Then on February 26, 263 people were pulled over. LPD reported 83 percent of stops were for speeding, and two percent for failing to follow the ‘Move Over, Slow Down’ law.
“It’s not to say that a citation was given for every stop, but 750 people got a little bit of a wake up call of ‘hey maybe I need to change what I’m doing,” Matherly said.
The task force goes out once a month, looking out for people who are speeding or not following the ‘Move Over, Slow Down’ law.
“It’s a day that we have extra staffing dedicated specifically to these enforcements to try and change the behavior of our drivers in the city,” Matherly said.
After three months, law enforcement will analyze the data to see if driver habits have changed, and what they should focus on for the next quarter of the year.
“We can really pull that and utilize that information to see where we’ve been successful and what times are we looking at and do we need to try and adjustour enforcement areas and adjust the enforcement times,” Bures said.
LPD said the operation will continue throughout the remainder of 2020.
