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Officers target unsafe vehicles in traffic blitz

Dec 9, 2016 | 1:30 PM

Unsafe commercial and private vehicles travelling into the city were targeted by local officers in a traffic blitz on Friday morning.

As part of a joint initiative to keep local roads safe, an impromptu vehicle safety check was set up by Community Safety Officers (CSO) to conduct spot checks just north of Territorial Dr. as cars entered the north end of the city.

“They were out there just checking vehicles to make sure that they meet all the requirements of the road,” said Albert Headrick, North Battleford’s director of protective services. “It’s part of the CSO program, since we take care of highway traffic enforcement around the city. We do other spot checks as well with other alternative agencies as well and that’s what they were doing this morning.”

Headrick said these stops happen from time and time, depending on the availability of resources they get to assist them. It could happen once, twice, three, or more times a year.

On Friday, they were focused on heavy vehicles and the state of weights and measures. It was a joint effort between the city and the Ministry of Transportation (MOT).

“We were assisting the MOT as an assisting agency conducting these traffic stops,” Headrick said. “Sometimes the provincial agencies, they’ve had these step programs before that come in and ask our CSOs to help them as well because it’s a provincial initiative. This one was a city and also ministry of transportation initiative.”

They only have the resources to pick one intersection at a time, and locations change throughout the year.

“We just pick certain intersections where we’re going to get this kind of traffic going through,” Headrick said. “It won’t be consistent throughout the year. It will be different check stops in different areas. But also high traffic areas where we have accidents, we focus on as well.”

Headrick didn’t have exact figures as to how many violations there were.

“I’m sure some violations have been issued today in regards to the state of vehicles and also the state of weights and measures,” he said.

 

Nathan Kanter is a reporter with battlefordsNOW. He can be reached at Nathan.kanter@jpbg.ca or tweet him @NathanKanter11