More Stories from the Road

So something came up today that I was actually...

This is also kind of right up your alley as a former traffic guy.

But...

We talk about, and I was kind of thinking about this, just when you see when you're out and about and driving and doing your thing, and obviously you guys are still working, so you're out there and you're busy.

And where I'm at here outside of Chicago, I feel like you know, just sometimes I feel like in the morning, you know, back when we started, there was a lot, you'd see a lot of traffic cars out or you'd see a lot of patrol cars out doing stuff or cars like field training cars that are training people, making a lot of traffic stops, you know, because that's part of what you're supposed to do.

You know, it's, That is part of being the police is making traffic stops.

It's not necessarily quotas or any kind of thing, but that is considered part of what you do.

And there's value to that, obviously, in a variety of different things.

And I was talking to a chief friend of mine today who was in a class, and they were talking about here in Illinois – And maybe you guys have a version of this, like they call them step grants here or that type of thing in Illinois, where basically there's grants that are funded to go out and do seatbelt enforcement or DUI enforcement or the variety of different things, especially at certain times of the year and this and that.

And so people...

It's money that's allocated for agencies to have officers do these details and go out.

And you're required in those ones, right? You're required to have at least a certain number of contacts or tickets or warnings or not.

I can't

remember.

On the grants? The grants, you have to have so many contacts, so many traffic stops.

It's like one per hour for the hours of the grant.

Right.

So you have to meet certain requirements.

So it's not just like go out and wallpaper everybody with tickets, but you need to be out and be doing enforcement.

And if that enforcement means writing warnings, writing tickets, whatever.

But then you do hit high.

You have to go through the computer and you have to get for this grant.

You have to say, okay, we're going to hit... 35th and Martin Luther King drive, because you know, it's a high crash area.

Or if you're doing DUIs that, you know, there's been a lot of, you know, DUI activity.

So you, you get this grant and you get this block of money, but you, you're, you have to go be in a specific area and you have to record that.