Baltimore Police launch new traffic enforcement initiative including city-wide sobriety checkpoints
Baltimore Police launched a city-wide initiative to reduce traffic accidents and fatalities with increased enforcement in the most dangerous roadways in the city.
The initiative started Friday and will run through Aug. 16. Police will focus on the areas with the highest concentration of fatal accidents and crashes with injury over the last three years.
“I am very concerned by the increase in motorists violating traffic laws and parking illegally, serious vehicle crashes and road rage incidents,” said Police Commissioner Richard Worley in a news release on Thursday. “These actions jeopardize public safety for everyone who uses the roadways. If you are going to drive on city streets, you need to obey the rules of the road.”
Each district will focus on two to three locations, Baltimore police said in a news release Thursday. Sobriety checkpoints will be part of this initiative with the assistance of partner agencies, police say.
The Baltimore Sun previously reported officers had already been tasked with writing citations for low-level offenses such as loitering, drinking in public and drug possession.
Baltimore police also will have neighborhood coordination officers examine environmental issues leading to traffic crashes and fatalities.
The Sun previously reported Councilman Mark Conway, who leads the City Council’s Public Safety and Government Operations Committee, said a father of young children told him didn’t feel safe walking on sidewalks in some areas because of how fast people in cars were speeding by.
Conway added that it will be important to ensure officers are being “careful” about their interactions with the public and making sure to comply with the city’s policing consent decree with the federal government. Baltimore police expect to make public data about its pedestrian stops, vehicle stops and arrests for misdemeanor offenses under the decree. The data is required to include demographic information of the targeted individuals as well as the outcomes of those stops.