GILROY
– More and more local citizens are complaining of chronic
traffic violations, and even though traffic accident statistics
have been inching rather than soaring upward, the Gilroy Police
Department will soon dedicate an officer exclusively for traffic
patrol.
GILROY – More and more local citizens are complaining of chronic traffic violations, and even though traffic accident statistics have been inching rather than soaring upward, the Gilroy Police Department will soon dedicate an officer exclusively for traffic patrol.
Speeding is the biggest cause for complaint to City Hall, according to City Administrator Jay Baksa, and red-light runners prompt numerous calls to the police station, Assistant Chief Lanny Brown said.
Other callers mention stop-sign violators, jaywalkers and “problems around the schools, where kids are almost getting hit by cars,” said police Officer Joseph Crivello, who will step into the traffic officer post by February.
“Right now, it doesn’t seem like we’re very responsive to what they have been wanting,” Crivello said.
“Whenever we do surveys or have discussions with the general public, … enforcement of traffic always comes up as one of the major issues,” Baksa said.
The position is one of two new GPD posts City Councilmen budgeted for nearly a year ago, to be used as police saw fit. Police decided then to reinstate the traffic officer, according to Brown, but due to several retirements, the reshuffling is behind schedule.
The traffic officer will help the city pay for himself by writing more tickets, but not as he could have in the past. The county Superior Court has reduced the percentage cities get from ticket fines in their jurisdictions, Brown and Baksa said. Brown said he doubted the officer could generate enough ticket revenue to cover his salary.
“My answer to you 10 years ago would have been, ‘Absolutely,’ but … these days we can’t say that,” Brown said.
Regular officers will still have traffic duties, but Crivello will add pressure to particular problem issues and areas.
“One of the things a beat officer doesn’t have is a focused period of time to solve traffic issues, whereas the traffic officer would,” Baksa said. “If it takes four hours, he can take four hours.”
“I want to be able to investigate accidents to the fullest extent possible,” Crivello said. “Whereas right now, a lot of times officers are rushed because … you have to go to a domestic violence (scene) where someone’s getting beat up pretty good.”
Crivello, who has been a Gilroy policeman for four years, said he enjoys traffic patrol over his other duties. As a result, he’s been assigned to it more than most officers. He can’t figure out why he likes it so much, but it’s the same reason he loved watching California Highway Patrol motorcycle cops Ponch and John do their thing on the television show “CHiPs” when he was a kid.
Like Ponch and John, Crivello will be riding a motorcycle by April or May, although he’ll begin his new job driving the department’s two-year-old Chevrolet Camaro. The GPD will purchase a motorcycle by March, at which time Crivello will begin 80 hours of motorcycle training, according to Brown.
“A motorcycle can get into congested areas like the outlets,” Brown said. “It’s much easier to park and go after a violator on a motorcycle, and we can also use it for the levee (by Uvas Creek) and the parks.”
Brown was Gilroy’s first and last motorcycle cop. From 1989 to 1991, he and Capt. Scot Smithee patrolled the city’s streets full-time: Brown on a motorcycle and Smithee in a Ford Mustang. Brown said he successfully advocated for the program at that time after seeing traffic problems he described as “awful.”
In those two years, the city’s accident rate dropped to below the state average, Brown said.
More recently, Gilroy has been in the middle of the pack accident-wise, compared with other California cities of between 25,000 and 50,000 residents, according to the state Office of Traffic Safety. Out of 95 cities in this category in 2001 (the most recent year for which numbers are available), Gilroy was 59th in terms of fatal and injury accidents per 1,000 residents. Watsonville, about the same size, ranked worse at 49th, and Hollister was 42nd. Elsewhere in Santa Clara County in this category, Gilroy ranked below Los Altos (21st), Los Gatos (40th) and Campbell (56th) but above Saratoga (73rd).
Gilroy had 149 wrecks that caused injury or death in 2001. Of those, only 34 were speed-related – a smaller percentage than in any of the cities named above.
Milpitas, with just 20,000 more people than Gilroy, had more than three-and-a-half times the number of injury accidents and seven times the number linked to speeding.
Nevertheless, Gilroy’s accident rate is “inching up a little bit at a time,” Brown said. Crivello said he thinks that’s a symptom of a growing city, but he claims his new position will reduce accidents.
“The public, they’re going to see that traffic officer out there pulling people over, issuing citations, warnings,” he said. “You’re going to always have, in the back of your mind, ‘You know what? Maybe I should slow down. … I can get a ticket, and yes, it is unsafe. … And you know what? My buddy got a ticket for speeding last week, so I better take it easy.’ ”
Some of the streets Crivello plans to focus on are Monterey Road near the northern city limit, Church Street, Sunrise Drive, First Street, Leavesley Road/Welburn Avenue, Santa Teresa Boulevard, Tenth Street and Luchessa Avenue/Thomas Road.
