Cars backed up at a stoplight in Brown County. PC: Fox 11 Online
BROWN COUNTY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – Law enforcement agencies in Brown County worked to curb reckless driving in September. And the extra enforcement netted almost 5-hundred citations and nearly 50 arrests.
From highways to city streets, motorists admit they’re not always the best when behind the wheel.
“Honestly, if I was going to rate on a scale of 1-10, one being bad ten being the best, to be honest I’d say I’m about a six. Why is that? It’s easy to get distracted when you’re driving,” said Sofia Dorsey of Menasha.
It’s a pattern they see with others drivers too.
Jose Gonzalez of Green Bay added, “I see a lot of the same things, people texting, driving on phone calls. I see them eating.”
And after recent complaints about distracted and reckless drivers in the Brown County area, several law enforcement agencies including the Sheriff’s Office, Green Bay Police, Ashwaubenon Public Safety and the State Patrol teamed up for a special enforcement.
“Some of it, it was complaint focused where we were getting our largest number of complaints. Reckless driving complaints has been increasing in the county, not just in Green Bay but in all areas of the county. We focused on those. We focused on reckless driving on the highways, especially coming at the tail end of our construction season,” said Capt. John Rousseau with the Brown County Sheriff’s Office.
For nine days in September, the agencies targeted problematic areas in the county. The Highway 172 construction site was one of them, East Shore Drive, along the bay was another.
During the crackdown, there were 563 citations issued, another 586 warnings, and 48 arrests, half of which were for operating while intoxicated.
Rousseau said, “We’ve been focusing obviously on OWIs in Wisconsin and our area for a substantial period of time and while we are trending in the right direction we still have a drinking and driving problem in this area and that’s one of the things we continue to focus on.”
Law enforcement officials say these targeted patrols always net extra stops, citations and warnings. The saturation patrols increase visibility and are a way to educate drivers, back to the basics of safe driving to curb accidents or incidents in the future.
According to Rousseau, “Try to identify these problems, try to find them when they’re little problems and then do something about them. It’s what we did in this case to hopefully get that message out there that we’re out there, we’re watching for these behaviors you will get pulled over and chances are you may get a citation for it.”
It’s a technique drivers say is effective and makes them think twice before getting behind the wheel. Sofia Dorsey added, “I believe police really help enforce people to be better drivers. I’m not going to lie, I just had to take a traffic class for some points and I think that more people need to be re-educated.”
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