Top neighborhood cop Lt. Dana Smith promised East Rockers that police will focus on traffic-calming in response to five separate incidents of drivers hitting pedestrians in January alone.
Smith made the promise during a presentation Monday night at the virtual monthly meeting of the East Rock Community Management Team.
In January of 2021, there was just one pedestrian struck, he noted.
Smith laid out some specific plans.
“Let’s say the officers are in between calls. I want them to go to what are called hotspot areas and [sit in] a cruiser to kind of write the reports there,” with the aim to “slow things down in those areas,” Smith said.
“Hopefully, that will deter people from speeding or anything of that nature,” and decrease the volume of accidents.
Smith said that January was “pretty tough” because the whole police force was low on staffing. District 7 had only six officers to cover East Rock, Newhallville and Cedar Hill. “And we had 890 calls of service, as well, so we had to address those.”
Smith said February “was a little busy as well,” but he is eager to begin traffic initiatives like this one to “assist with these quality of life issues that we’re having on the East Rock side as well.”
East Rock CMT members Max Chaoulideer and Rob Rocke reflected on the rise in pedestrian crashes in the chat section of the Zoom meeting, pictured below.
Management team Chair Elena Grewal noted the discussion in the chat, and commented that the number is “high,” and that it is “sad about the pedestrians.”
Smith said that as the department returns to normal staffing levels, officers are “getting back to doing what we need to do as far as keeping the community safe.”
The police officers can’t reduce the number of vehicles speeding and driving distracted, and hitting pedestrians and bike riders. They only provide a temporary deterrence when they are in a specific location.
What really helps is road design with narrow road diets, shared center left turn lanes with priority for emergency vehicles, bike lanes and bike left turn boxes, raised crosswalks, longer crossing lights, raised intersections, speed humps, speed bumps, traffic circles and roundabouts, trees, planters and plantings, red light cameras and speed cameras ticketing vehicles with bad behavior 24/7, and synchronizing the traffic lights down Whalley, Whitney, Dixwell, Route 34, Ella Grasso, Grand Ave and other major heavily traveled streets in and out of the city.
The police can’t be everywhere all the time and they have more important work to do.
Let road design encourage good driver behavior, rewarding those who keep to speed limits with synchronized stoplights that keep traffic flowing at posted speeds, and deterrence of bad behavior with photographic evidence and automatic tickets for speeding and red light running.