Concord, N.H. (AP) -- Assistant Safety Commissioner Earl Sweeney says state troopers should be stopping more drivers.
He points out that highway patrol is a fundamental duty of state police, and that contact with drivers has declined in recent years.
“I’m focusing more on contacts than I am on tickets,” Sweeney told the New Hampshire Sunday News. “They are not out here to give everybody a ticket. They recognize the value of a warning as well.
“I’m just saying that if you ride around for eight hours and you’re observant that you should find somebody to stop every hour or two. You should be making contact with somebody.
“The fact is that some troopers are doing an awful lot of work and there are some that are not doing a lot of work,” he said of the 198 troopers.
He said troopers should hand out more tickets for stop-sign and solid-line violations and make more stops for missing a license plate, rolling on bald tires, or not showing brake lights.
He said officers should get out of their cruisers and check with the driver when they see a car on the shoulder of the interstate. Such action can lead to discovery of more serious violations, help prevent crime, change driving behavior, increase trooper visibility and boost the image of the force, he said.
Sweeney took over as assistant commissioner of safety in October 2003 after 18 years as director of the New Hampshire police Standards and Training Council.
He raised the issue of “proactive traffic enforcement” at a meeting in March with the state police lieutenants who command the six regional troop headquarters.
Sweeney said his only motivation is to push troopers to “be the absolute best that they can be.”
“The vast majority of them are doing that, but any of us can use a tune-up,” he said.
He said his message could apply also to city and town police departments and other enforcement agencies within the state Department of Safety.
Sweeney said his review of citations issued last year suggested an unnecessarily heavy reliance on radar enforcement of the speed laws.
“If a trooper’s radar malfunctions, we may as well send him or her home. Whatever happened to surveilling a yellow line, a stop sign, a yield sign, a school bus stop?” he said.
At the meeting with lieutenants, Sweeney cited statistics that showed state police made 166,357 vehicle stops in 2003, an average of 840 stops a year per trooper. Deducting vacation, training time and sick leave, he figured that is fewer than four stops a day per trooper.
“Doubling this to a stop an hour would have resulted in 332,714 stops instead of 166,357. How many lost opportunities to apprehend a DWI, a suspended or revoked driver, or a wanted person, does that represent?” Sweeney asked the troop commanders.
“Traffic activity is only one measurement, but I focused on that particular day on that particular measurement,” Sweeney said.
“The use of data and statistics, it’s the only way we can keep track of the 1,000 people who work for this agency in 30 or 40 locations around the state.
“State police is just one part of that and traffic activity is only one measurement that we’re using. We’re considering how they treat the public, how many complaints we receive. What’s the clearance rate on crime? What’s their personal appearance? How well do they take care of their vehicles? What’s the quality of their reports? Are they consistently getting convictions in court?”