Seeing cops all over Berkeley? It's traffic enforcement
Officers with the High Impact Traffic Team, a countywide collaboration, are stopping drivers all over town.
Dozens of traffic officers from around Alameda County descended on Berkeley on Wednesday to pull over drivers caught breaking the law in "high-collision areas."
The monthly operation — the location changes each time — "is a collaborative partnership between the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, the California Highway Patrol, and police departments throughout Alameda County," Berkeley police said this week.
Several readers who saw increased police activity Wednesday morning asked The Scanner what was happening — since Berkeley has only a small traffic unit and traffic enforcement stops don't happen often.
"I have rarely seen a police traffic stop during my commute through Berkeley," one reader told TBS: "Today, I saw four."
Readers said they saw CHP officers as well as police from Alameda and Newark, among other local law enforcement agencies.
The officers who came to Berkeley, 29 in total, are part of the county's High Impact Traffic Team (HITT).
On Wednesday, the unit is focusing on nine Berkeley locations that have seen serious and fatal crashes, along with other dangerous driving.
- Adeline Street corridor
- Alcatraz Avenue corridor
- Ashby Avenue corridor
- Dwight Way corridor
- Martin Luther King Jr. Way corridor
- Sacramento Street corridor
- San Pablo Avenue corridor
- University Avenue corridor
- Zachary's Corner area (Derby Street and Warring Street)
In an announcement earlier this week, BPD said the operation "supports the Berkeley Police Department’s unique traffic safety strategy, which reprioritizes traffic safety efforts around a three-prong approach that focuses on Primary Collision Factors (PCFs), community concerns submitted to BPD, and our role as community caretakers."
In last month's operation, which took place in unincorporated parts of Alameda County, officers issued more than 400 citations and made "numerous traffic safety education contacts."
Participating agencies in that effort included the Alameda County Sheriff's Office, California Highway Patrol (Hayward and Dublin), and the police departments of Alameda, Berkeley, East Bay Regional Parks, Fremont, Hayward, Livermore, Newark, San Leandro, Union City and Pleasanton, the sheriff's office.
Berkeley police told The Scanner that data from today's operation will be released in the coming weeks.
A smaller traffic enforcement operation in Berkeley last year resulted in 185 citations.
Wednesday's operation was funded through a grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety in partnership with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
