Paul Bass Photo
Ready to roll: Officers Jason Jackson, Oscar Diaz and Richard Burgos with supervisor Lt. Sephan Torquati Friday as they prepared to begin stepped-up dangerous-driving patrols.
Lead-foot drivers beware: These officers will be out in force in coming weeks to catch you in the act of endangering lives.
The above-pictured officers are members of the police department’s traffic enforcement unit. You see them with lasers and radar guns recording speeds at hotspots around town.
You will see them more than usual through Sept. 6. A $50,000 Connecticut Department of Transportation Speed and Aggressive Driving Enforcement Grant is paying for extra shifts at six treacherous speedways: Whalley Avenue, Townsend Avenue, Dixwell Avenue, Forbes Avenue, Foxon Boulevard, Ella Grasso Boulevard.
“You have been warned,” Lt. Stephan Torquati, who oversees the unit, declared to drivers who exceed the 25 or 35 mile-per-hour speed limit on those roads (i.e. pretty much everybody sometimes).
Torquati made the declaration at a Friday afternoon press conference held at 1 Union Ave. police headquarters to announce the stepped-up enforcement. He said the extra four-hour shifts will take place during weekday rush hour and on weekends.
Connecticut has already this year matched the 192 traffic-related fatalities it recorded in 2020, Torquati reported. New Haven has had 13 traffic-related fatalities this year; it had 26 last year. Torquati said that so far in 2021, the city has recorded 1,206 speeding-related crashes, 485 of them involving injuries. Last year the city recorded 1,564 speed-related crashes, with 786 involving injuries.
New state “mindset” seen: Mayor Justin Elicker, Interim Chief Renee Dominguez, and the traffic-enforcement team at Friday press conference announcing federal assistance.
Mayor Justin Elicker, Interim Police Chief Renee Dominguez, and City Engineer Giovanni Zinn said at the press conference that this effort fits into one of the “three E’s” of the city’s strategy of tackling deadly driving: Enforcement, Education, and Engineering.
The last E refers to redesigning roads to slow drivers down. New Haven has done a lot of that with city-owned roads. The deadliest roads — including most of those targeted in the current crackdown — are state-owned. New Haven has historically fought, with little success, to convince the state Department of Transportation (DOT) to consider the lives of pedestrians and cyclists rather than prioritizing faster car travel when designing and redesigning streets.
Elicker and Zinn said they have received assurances from the DOT’s new leaders, including Commissioner Joseph Giuletti, that the department now shares the city’s safe-streets vision. Giuletti offered a similar assurance to the Independent at this recent pedestrian/cyclist-centered event involving a city-DOT collaboration.
Zinn noted that it was the DOT’s initiative to launch a new study of Grasso Boulevard crashes in order to devise safety fixes.
“They’re committed to changing the mindset,” Elicker said.