When the calendar rolled over from 2009 to 2010, the Park City Police Department had pulled over 4,244 drivers in the previous six months, a breakneck pace when put against the numbers from past years.
The officers, though, were just getting started.
The Police Department reports officers pulled over 9,310 drivers in the 12-month period between mid-2009 and mid-2010, a staggering total that is likely the highest number ever recorded by the Police Department in the matter of 12 months. The 12 months ran from July 1, 2009 through June 30, 2010, mirroring City Hall’s fiscal year.
To pull over 9,310 drivers in a one-year period, the officers had to average more than one traffic stop an hour over the 12 months. The 9,310 traffic stops nearly quadrupled the number from the 12-month period that ended in mid-2009.
The police downgraded the number from a report that was submitted to Mayor Dana Williams and the Park City Council, saying the figures given to the elected officials included repeat cases.
Wade Carpenter, the police chief, said the increase came even as the department was down two officers. The Police Department, driven by long-running speeding complaints from Parkites, has widened its traffic patrols significantly in recent years, with drivers regularly seeing officers in police sport utility vehicles and driving motorcycles monitoring traffic.
“The Police Department, across the board, is doing more with less. They’re earning their pay. They’re working,” Carpenter said.
Curbing speeders has perplexed the Police Department since the population boom started in the 1980s, and speeding drivers have been especially worrisome in more recent years as Parkites and City Hall pushed to make the city safer for pedestrians and bicyclists. Many Parkites appear to support the stepped-up patrols in their neighborhoods, and the police chief said 80 percent of the 9,310 traffic stops occurred in neighborhoods.
Carpenter said nearly 70 percent of the traffic stops resulted in verbal warnings and another 8 percent received written warnings. Of the drivers who received tickets, the police chief said, 1,543 were cited for moving violations while 534 were ticketed for a nonmoving violation. A few of the drivers were ticketed for equipment violations.
The police chief also noted that the number of special events staged in Park City has increased sharply, bringing more crowds to the city. He attributed some of the increase in traffic stops to the busier calendar of special events since the Police Department schedules additional traffic patrols during those times.
“If we don’t manage traffic control, it will manage us,” Carpenter said.
The Police Department has long maintained it does not operate under a ticket-quota system, meaning that officers are not required to write a predetermined number of tickets during each shift they are assigned to traffic patrols.
Carpenter, though, acknowledged officers are expected to “be productive” while on duty. The number of traffic stops an officer conducts is among the performance measures that they are graded upon, he said.
The Police Department set a target of 7,000 traffic stops for the 12 months that started in mid-2010.
He said, meanwhile, officers sometimes discover other problems during a traffic stop spurred by a moving violation. The drivers might not have a license, might be driving with a license that has been suspended or could be driving without car insurance, Carpenter said. The Police Department has caught suspects in more serious crimes during traffic stops as well. Carpenter said burglary suspects might be found during a traffic stop, as an example.
Other numbers culled from the report include: