Lower Moreland Police Plan ‘Enforcement Blitz’

Speeders and seatbelt violators beware: The Lower Moreland Police Department is planning an enforcement detail in conjunction with back to school. 

Sgt. Dave Scirrotto said PennDOT aggressive driving and buckle up grants would help fund the overtime costs of officers who work a four-hour block as part of a late August, early September “enforcement blitz.”

Scirrotto said Lower Welsh, Old Welsh and Red Lion roads, as well as “any roads that feed into” those roads are the target areas.

“It’s an opportunity to try to get the speeds down, the aggressive driving down around our schools,” Scirotto said, adding that several of the township’s schools are located in that area.

While single officer enforcement details are common, Scirotto said it’s rare for four or five police to be out during the same four-hour block as it costs between $900 to $1,100 in overtime salary costs.

“That would be really expensive for the township to run them,” he said.

During a seatbelt blitz in May, which was funded in part through a $2,400 grant, covering 36 hours of overtime, Scirotto said 6,753 cars drove through educational checkpoints and 130 were stopped for seatbelt violations.

For the most part, “it basically just trains people to put their seatbelts on,” he said.

In Pennsylvania, the state’s seatbelt law requires that adults be pulled over for another violation in order to be cited for not wearing a seatbelt. However, the state recently made failure to wear a seatbelt a primary violation for people under 18, meaning police can pull over a teen driver, or a car where a child is standing up, for instance, without any other violations occurring, he said.

The township’s last aggressive driving blitz in March, covered in large part by a $1,600 PennDOT grant, yielded 115 stops for aggressive driving violations, he said.

Specific violations police look for include speeding, careless and reckless driving, tailgating, running a red light or stop sign and improper passing.

“A lot of people write no points tickets,” Scirrotto said. “When we do aggressive driving, part of the grant requires us to write the appropriate section … They’re all point violations."

Over the last two years, police have fielded 74 reckless driver calls in the area designated for the blitzes, made eight DUI arrests and issued multiple citations. In addition, Scirrotto said the police identified “the most dangerous intersections in Lower Moreland Township” and eight of the 14 are located in that corridor.

Huntingdon Pike and Welsh Road is the worst with 295 crashes over the last 13 years.

“A lot of it is either aggressive driving, or distracted driving,” he said.

Scirrotto credits the department’s traffic enforcement efforts with reducing crashes township-wide. In 2012, 591 crashes occurred in Lower Moreland, down slightly from 595 in 2011 and 635 in 2010.

On average, 1.62 crashes occur daily in Lower Moreland, he said, adding that the average was 1.86 in 2004.

“We have a huge transient population,” he said, adding that treks to Philadelphia are often routed through Lower Moreland. “There’s really no easy way to get into center city.”

While he would not say when, specifically, police would be out conducting blitzes, Scirrotto said drivers should “be on the lookout” through early September.