Regional Cooperation

On August 7, I had the opportunity to ride with Sgt. Charles Grasso of the Enfield PD. He was participating in a METRO traffic detail being conducted in the Town of Windsor. This was another in a series of “DWI” roadblocks being conducted by this regional team. METRO is a joint collaboration between the police departments in Enfield, East Windsor, Windsor Locks, Windsor, South Windsor, Manchester, and Coventry. This team also has an Accident Reconstruction Team as part of their services.

I have been told from my sources that there are some members of the Enfield town council who question the need for such an alliance. I find their questions short-sighted and in some cases self-serving. When the Enfield Police Department conducted a survey of customer service, the largest complaint that they received was that of traffic violations. As a former police officer, I can attest that one of the more frequent complaints that I received as a shift commander was that of speeding vehicles.

If one was to look at the current manpower of the Enfield PD, along with the activity, the ability to provide on-going traffic enforcement without impacting the number of officers on the road available to respond to calls is problematic. In order to provide the level of enforcement that is available by using the METRO traffic team, it would cost a tremendous amount of overtime. In this economic climate, that is simply too much to ask of our current police administration.

That brings me to the current town council. Apparently, one of the council members wives was recently “delayed” in a traffic situation reportedly caused by one of these DWI roadblocks. As someone who has worked on these details previously, I can tell you that if traffic becomes an issue, the officers assigned to the roadblock are told to “free-flow” the traffic in order to relieve the congestion. So, my guess is that this particular councilman’s wife was maybe delayed by two or three minutes, hardly a large inconvenience. It is this town councilman who is now questioning the need for us to have out of town officers assisting Enfield  police officers with these details. This is short-sighted.

If one is to check the accident statistics for the Town of Enfield, since the inception of the METRO program, serious accidents have been reduced substantially. This is a testament to the effectiveness of having increased enforcement of traffic laws.

One would think that the town council would be doing handstands over the effectiveness of having accidents reduced as opposed to being concerned about self-serving interests. Apparently some are less than thrilled, and that is scary.