The Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office said community involvement is crucial when it comes to reporting aggressive or reckless driving.
“Traffic continues to be a problem in Santa Rosa,” said Rich Aloy, the department’s public information officer. “As we continue to growing in population, it becomes worse and worse. In Santa Rosa, we have such a diverse group of drivers because we are sandwiched in between three major military installations with people from all over the world, so their driving habits are very different.”
“We cannot do it without the citizens of our county, it’s teamwork. A lot of things come out from a citizen saying ‘I think there is something wrong here,’” said Aloy.
Whether the driver is distracted, under the influence, having medical issues or even being subjected to domestic violence while inside a moving vehicle, Aloy said there are numerous reasons which are associated with reckless driving.
“There are so many different reasons why people call in reckless drivers and it ends up being something different,” Aloy said.
When witnessing reckless driving taking place, Aloy urges residents to try and get a license plate number, vehicle description and a direction of travel when reporting it to local law enforcement.
Although a deputy may not be able to witness the careless driving in progress, the reported incident is still of beneficial use to law enforcement, Aloy said.
“If there is a reckless driver around and nobody ever calls him in, he’s going to get into a crash or something bad is going to happen,” Aloy said. “If someone calls in that vehicle consistently, it gives the officer making that traffic stop information.”
With a traffic stop, a decision is made by the law enforcement officer on whether to issue a verbal or written warning or if a citation should be issued at the LEO’s discretion.
In addition to looking up a driver’s history, law enforcement takes other variables into consideration like when and where the traffic offense took place. An example is if the offense took place in a neighborhood or school area where children are typically present.
“You have to take everything into consideration when your deciding on whether to give a person a ticket or not,” Aloy said. “All of those things come into play, but how great is it to know that person was called in as a reckless driver 15 to 20 earlier with that same tag number.”
For the second consecutive year, the sheriff’s office continues to implement their traffic unit consisting of unmarked patrol vehicles, tasked with enforcing traffic laws. Aloy said the department’s traffic unit is beneficial in addressing aggressive and reckless driving.
“There are certain things that a unmarked car will give you that an marked car won’t,” Aloy said.
In the presence of a clearly marked sheriff’s vehicle, most drivers will be on their best behavior, he said. Whereas the unmarked units are able to catch the problematic driving in action.
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: Sheriff's Office: Community urged to report aggressive driving