Leon County Sheriff’s Office has won a statewide award for having one of the best traffic safety programs in Florida.
With 275 officers, the Leon County Sheriff’s office received 1st place statewide for agencies around its size.
The recognition came from the Florida Department of Transportation. Enforcement of traffic safety laws and educational campaigns about distractive driving are among the criteria the agency used to compare local agencies across the state. Deputy Dave Teems is the spokesman for the Leon County Sheriff’s office.
“The Florida Department of Transportation considers all the stats that the Sheriff’s office has: total number of traffic stops, traffic crashes, the number of traffic-related organized events that we do—whether it be DUI checkpoints, traffic stop checkpoints, speeding checkpoints, that type of things,” he said. “Everything that we do to help educate the public. They take all of that into account.”
Teems says the sheriff’s office Traffic Unit made gains in reducing traffic crashes, injuries, and fatalities in the Leon County area.
“So, we did almost 15,000 traffic stops last year, which is a large increase over the year before,” he added. “Only about 15 percent of those actually resulted in a citation being given. We’re not out here trying to charge the public a bunch of money. Again, it’s about education and trying to make sure the public is aware we’re trying to make things safer. We also had a decrease in traffic accidents by about six percent.”
Crashes involving pedestrians are also included in those figures.
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