By Annmarie Timmins
Concord Monitor
CONCORD, N.H. — When police Chief Robert Barry came to Concord many years ago, his father warned him to yield to pedestrians on Main Street and to watch his right turns on red. The Concord police, his dad said, took traffic laws seriously.
And now more than ever.
The department has reassigned veteran patrol Officer Bill Dexter to head up a new traffic enforcement unit that will focus exclusively on, well, traffic problems.
Traffic problems - from speeding drivers to reckless bicyclists to illegal cut-throughs - are by and far the No. 1 complaint from residents, Barry said. There are more than 2,000 accidents in the city annually, more than half of them involving injuries or significant vehicle damage. And routine traffic stops often uncover much bigger crimes.
“Timothy McVeigh was a motor vehicle stop,” Dexter said. McVeigh was stopped 90 minutes after he bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995 because a police officer noticed he was driving a beat-up car without a license plate.
In Concord, a stop sign violation or reckless driving often results in a drunken driving or habitual offender arrest. It’s not unusual to see a drug charge, too.
Barry pitched the new traffic enforcement unit to city councilors earlier this year as one of many ways to improve public safety. Patrol officers were becoming too busy with other calls to dedicate enough time to traffic enforcement, Barry said.
But Barry wanted to create the new unit within his current budget and without asking for new positions, so he had to wait until the force had filled most of its vacancies. The department is just about there. So about two weeks ago, Dexter was pulled off his regular patrol and reassigned to the new traffic unit.
Dexter had in-house competition for the job and is clearly pleased he got it. “Over my entire career, I’ve done traffic enforcement,” said Dexter, who has been a member of the Concord police department for 18 years. “It’s a mobile society, and criminals drive vehicles.”
Eventually, Barry would like to add two more officers, but for now, the unit is just Dexter, a cruiser and an e-mail address for residents who want to report a hot traffic problem: traffic@concordpolice.com People can also call the station at 225- 8600.
But this new unit isn’t about covert speed traps and stop sign stings, Barry said. Nor is it a revenue generator targeted at speeders.
“Enforcement is just one tool,” he said. “Writing a certain number of tickets or a certain number of warnings is not the ultimate goal. We want to change behavior.” That means educating residents, repeatedly if necessary, about a particular problem, whether it’s riding bicycles on sidewalks or going too fast to watch for pedestrians on Fisherville Road.
As an example, Barry pointed to speeding in school zones before and after school. Five years ago, it was a major problem in the city, Barry said. It’s far less so now, he said, because patrol officers spent months policing the area in a sustained way. That and signs that flash motorists’ speeds have persuaded people to slow down even when they don’t see a cruiser.
City Councilor Dick Lemieux has been an enthusiastic supporter of the new unit since Barry first introduced it because he too hears mostly about traffic from constituents. He said he especially likes the notion that Dexter will educate motorists as well as enforce traffic laws.
“Some (people) don’t need to be ticketed,” Lemieux said. “They just need to be stopped once.”
Patrol officers will still handle traffic problems in their individual sectors, but the targeted enforcement of particular problems will fall to Dexter. He’ll patrol the entire city and work with neighborhood groups and the city’s traffic engineer.
The department already knows some of its most dangerous traffic areas because that’s where they see the most accidents. They aren’t a surprise because they are the roads that also see the most traffic: Loudon Road is tops, followed by North State, Pleasant and Main streets.
But Dexter will also respond to tips, concerns and complaints he gets by telephone or e-mail. Think twice, though, about making a clever excuse if he pulls you over for a blatant violation.
After nearly 20 years on the job, Dexter has heard just about every story. He can recall only one that persuaded him against writing a ticket. A woman was speeding to the hospital because she was about to give birth.
Copyright 2008 Concord Monitor