Law enforcement agencies in our region teamed up for a special mission over the weekend. They called it the Metro Area Traffic Enforcement Collaboration (MATEC) and for the four nights between Friday and Monday (which was St. Patrick’s Day), they pulled over 1,213 people.
The partnership includes the Portland Police Bureau, Washington County PD, Oregon State Police, and about two dozen agencies altogether (including the Portland Bureau of Transportation). Across the region they wrote 730 citations, issued 925 warnings, and arrested 85 people. 58 of those were driving while impaired by drugs and/or alcohol. According to a PPB statement, most of the tickets were given for speeding violations (416 citations) and the second most common infraction was “lane misuse” (289 citations).
Officers fanned out from Lake Oswego to Gresham looking for people running afoul of their “SOLID enforcement priorities” which PPB defines as, “Speed, Occupant Safety, Lane Usage, Impaired Driving, and Distracted Driving.”
At a news conference hosted by PPB on Friday prior to the enforcement action, Officer Chase Fullington, a member of PPB’s Major Crash Team that responds to fatal and serious collisions, laid out the human toll of all this dangerous driving:
“The hardest part for me is the very end of the call-out it’s after the scene’s been imaged it’s after the evidence that’s been collected after the vehicles have been towed and after the person that died in the crash has been taken by the medical examiner it’s when I have to go to the residence where the person lived and tell their loved ones that they’re not coming home and the sad thing about it is that these crashes are entirely preventable.”
This effort underscores just how many people drive illegally and increase the danger for everyone else on the road at any given moment in neighborhoods across the region, but it’s also a reminder that at least police agencies are trying to do something about it. Beyond these special missions however, it validates my belief that we need different enforcement approaches that don’t rely on armed officers. This is very resource-intensive, risky for everyone involved, and highly inefficient given the scope of the problem. In the future I hope to see more automated cameras, traffic enforcement by non-sworn city staff, changes to the built environment, and a bigger effort to address the underlying social problems that contribute to our dangerous driving culture.
