Ariane Lange
The Sacramento Bee
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The Sacramento Police Department will ramp up enforcement of traffic safety violations in high-risk areas with new grant funding from the state, Chief Kathy Lester said in a city news release.
The $400,000 grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety will run through September.
Sacramento has some of the worst traffic fatality rates in California, and last year, The Sacramento Bee reported on the deaths of 32 people. This year, records previously released by the Police Department show three crashes killed people between Jan. 1 and Feb. 13 . Another severe crash made international news last month when Nilam Shinde, a 35-year-old engineer, was left in a coma after a collision on Fair Oaks Boulevard near Cadillac Drive. A representative for Sacramento State confirmed that Shinde, who immigrated from India, is a current graduate student in the university’s master’s program for business analytics. NDTV reported that she was hit not far from where Johnnie A. Fite, a cyclist, was fatally struck last June.
Lester said the grant would “strengthen our traffic enforcement efforts.” Among other programs, police would ramp up speeding enforcement, add DUI checkpoints and add operations that target distracted drivers. The money would also be used on operations that focus on drivers who particularly endanger cyclists and pedestrians. Last summer, officers conducted a one-day crosswalk “sting operation” at the intersection of 21st and J streets and issued 55 citations for violations that endangered pedestrians, including failure to yield.
A few weeks before the sting operation, a crash killed a 55-year-old grandfather and Marine veteran, José Luis Silva, while he rode his motorcycle through the same intersection.
The vast majority of traffic fatalities are preventable with changes to infrastructure. With that in mind, in 2017, Sacramento’s City Council made a “Vision Zero” pledge to eliminate all traffic fatalities and severe injuries by 2027. Data released by the Sacramento Police Department in response to a public records request show that more than 300 people have died on city streets since the council made that pledge.
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