The Cleveland Police Department has been awarded a $13,260 High Visibility Enforcement (HVE) grant from the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety (GOHS).
Cleveland Police Chief Jeff Shoemaker said in making the announcement, that funding for this grant is provided by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and is awarded based upon the partnership with The Governor’s Office of Highway Safety in helping to reduce crashes, injuries, and fatalities across the State of Georgia.
Chief Shoemaker highlighted some reasons for the award, “our agency has done a lot of hard work to reduce the number of accidents in the city and also reduce the number of injuries.”
Law enforcement efforts are combined with visibility elements and public notification on the enforcement campaign to educate the public on traffic safety and promote voluntary compliance with the law.
“My role is to go out, and I watch for traffic — looking for high visibility and looking for safety issues in cars, mainly for occupant safety, look for seat belts not being used, children not being in their car seat,” said Cleveland Police Officer Keith Rayner. “If I pull somebody over, they don’t always get a ticket. Sometimes, I educate people about making sure the car seats are in correctly, and children are properly in them. I’ll go through a car seat inspection with them and give them information on how to keep their car seat safe for children sometimes, that is better than giving out a citation.”
Director of the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety Allen Poole said, “Federal and state crash data show sustained enforcement of traffic laws reduces crashes and saves lives on our roads.”
As law enforcement around the state partners in the Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over DUI and Click It Or Ticket seatbelt campaigns, the Cleveland Police Department will also conduct mobilizations throughout the year in coordination with GOHS’s year-round waves of high visibility patrols and multi-jurisdictional sobriety checkpoints.
