Deputy Chief Oliver Morris
By KIRSTEN LASKEY
Los Alamos Daily Post
kirsten@ladailypost.com
Driver safety is a big focus of the Los Alamos Police Department, Los Alamos County Council learned during its May 21 work session.
Promoting safe driving and curb poor driving is under discussion.
According to the staff report, there is some good news in the traffic citation data. Accidents total 75 so far in 2024, a drop compared to 196 in 2023 and 751 in 2022. Criminal citations related to traffic decreased to six so far in 2024 compared to 34 in 2023 and 24 in 2022.
“There are a lot of opportunities to increase our efforts with our motoring population,” Deputy Chief Oliver Morris said.
Cmdr. Daniel Roberts
One opportunity, he said, is to increase police visibility and prevent poor driving habits. For instance, earlier this year Morris said the police department partnered with neighboring tribal agencies and utilized a memorandum of understanding (MOU) through Santa Fe County and in just two mornings, issued 240 citations at the Y off N.M. 4 and the Main Hill Road.
There also are discussions with Los Alamos National Laboratory about driver safety, Deputy Chief Morris said. If an investment is desired, Morris said funding could be utilized to reimburse Los Alamos police officer overtime who would solely focus on laboratory traffic.
There is also some discussion about speed camera enforcement equipment, he said. This would require an ordinance to be implemented and a vendor would need to be procured to maintain calibration every year for fixed and mobile automated citation issuing machines. Citations would be civil in nature.
While this would take time to implement, Deputy Chief Morris said another investment option would be blue light traffic signal indicators that can detect, from the officer’s perspective, red lights from multiple vantage points so that police do not need to be right behind the vehicle or run the lights themselves, to enforce red light violations.
While technology is helpful in curbing poor driving, Police Cmdr. Daniel Roberts said, “I think the best thing that County Council has done in the last several years was to give us more officers … we have three patrol areas within the County and some of our teams were staffed at four officers … getting more officers allows us to respond to calls but also increase traffic enforcement at the same time.”
He noted that the recent fatality on the Truck Route and head-on crash on the Main Hill Road were not caused by speeding but distracted driving, which can only be interpreted if an officer witnesses it; it cannot be done with a camera.
