Ride-along on ‘saturation’ traffic enforcement day

In enforcing traffic laws out on the streets, officers on motorcycles have advantages, police say. They have a higher seat than when inside a patrol car and they can share a lane and get right next to a vehicle, the better to look inside and spot unlawful behavior, such as talking on a hand-held phone or texting.

Motorcycle officers are “extremely effective” at traffic enforcement and give “a ton” more tickets, said Cpl. Brett Murphy of the Burlingame Police Department. He should know. He spends most of his workdays in traffic on a motorcycle.

But on a recent Wednesday, he was in a patrol car and away from his ordinary beat. He was lead officer of a group of 22 officers on motorcycles. Cpl. Murphy would have been on a motorcycle as well, but for the presence of an Almanac photographer and this reporter accompanying him on an afternoon ride-along.

In the morning, the officers patrolled East Palo Alto and issued 114 citations. In Menlo Park in the afternoon, they issued 93. Cpl. Murphy had, to this reporter, what seemed like a slow afternoon, issuing just three tickets: two for seat-belt violations and one for running a stop sign.

“In a perfect world, I’d like to go out here and issue no tickets. The goal is not to … issue tickets,” he said. “These deployments are about education and enforcement.” It’s not a perfect outcome, but speeding and distracted driving tend to be much less frequent for about 10 days after such deployments, he said.

Why Menlo Park?

The Oct. 15 deployment was part of the county’s Saturation Traffic Enforcement Program (STEP), in effect since January 2013. On one day a month, the program brings together 25 motorcycle officers, more or less, from law-enforcement agencies in the county.

This was the 10th such event in 2014, always held on the third Wednesday of the month, and organized by the Burlingame Police Department. The program has no funding; police departments contribute an officer or two if they are available.

Menlo Park has had more than its share of deployments recently. The STEP event for September also included Menlo Park, but combined with Atherton. On that day, officers issued 252 citations across both communities.

In a separate event in September, funded by the state Office of Traffic Safety, motorcycle officers gathered for a day in Menlo Park and Atherton to focus on distracted driving. They issued 76 tickets for illegal cellphone use and six for texting.

On these special deployments, the officers concentrate on areas that local police consider trouble spots. At least some of the trouble spots are chosen based on what local police hear from residents, Cpl. Murphy said.

Excuses, excuses

A common refrain when talking to a driver who’s been pulled over is an old question and a good one: Why me?

That’s one thing that I’ll get on a very regular basis,” Cpl. Murphy said. “They ask, ‘How can you give me a ticket when I saw somebody doing this?’ or ‘I was just going with the flow of traffic.'”

“You hear every excuse in the book on why they should not get a ticket,” he said. He recalled one man he stopped for not wearing a seat belt who told him that he always wore his seat belt. “I almost gave him a warning,” Cpl. Murphy said. But then he took a look at his record and saw 13 seat-belt violations.

“Eventually, we get to the point where (we’re thinking) ‘You know what? Sorry.’ People look you in the face and tell you a direct lie,” he said. “I care about every single person that I contact. But I also have a job to do.”

He said he treats people as he would want to be treated, and that “almost all officers” have that outlook. “If people are yelling at me, most of the time, they’re yelling at my uniform,” he said. “They’re not yelling at me.”

The majority of people he “contacts” are good people and thank him, he said.

Police officers are police officers by choice and agree to a higher standard of behavior, he said, but they are also required to go to scenes that the rest of us would rather avoid. The emotions and memories associated with difficult negative experiences can hang around for days.

“It’s important to remember that we’re human,” he said. “These things affect us, too.”

Getting real

Traffic was light on the Bayfront Expressway at Chilco Street. The white sign said 50 mph. Cpl. Murphy’s patrol car sat alongside the expressway’s northbound lane. On a nearby spur to a bike lane running parallel to the expressway were two officers on motorcycles. All three officers were pointing laser speed detectors at oncoming vehicles.

Using just his eyes, Cpl. Murphy said he can gauge a vehicle’s speed to within 5 mph. Officers who train other officers to use laser detectors are, with the naked eye, accurate to within 3 mph, he said.

Over about 30 minutes, the motorcycle officers roared off one at a time to issue citations here and there, but Cpl. Murphy came up empty. Eventually, Cpl. Murphy headed across the expressway and onto Chilco Street. One block in, a man in a coffee delivery truck stopped at the stop sign at Constitution Drive and Chilco, then turned onto Chilco toward the expressway. Cpl. Murphy made a U-turn and went after him.

“What did he do?” this reporter asked. “Seat belt,” Cpl. Murphy said, gunning the engine and engaging his overhead lights. The truck passed through the expressway intersection before pulling over.

In an interview, Greg, a man from Fremont in his 40s who was driving the truck, summed up his experience briefly. “I just left this business right over here,” he said, pointing across the expressway, “and had my seat belt off. Probably next time, before I throw it into drive, I’ll be putting it on.”

Seat belts are the single most effective way to reduce injuries in accidents,” Cpl. Murphy said. “You cannot rely on an air bag.”

A few minutes later, staked out on Hamilton Avenue near Chilco, Cpl. Murphy pulled over a woman in her 50s. Her violation: She had slowed to maybe 5 to 7 mph instead of stopping at the stop sign.

“It’s a shock to me,” the woman told this reporter. “I’ve been living here for 56 years. It’s a shock to me, but I don’t have no problem with it. I’ve been through here forever. Sometimes, people run through that sign.”

“I am a trained observer,” Cpl. Murphy said. If he cannot tell whether a stopping vehicle’s front wheel has a hub cap or a rim, he concludes that it did not stop, he said. Asked if he gives warnings, he said he does, but not when asked by local police to patrol a particular spot.

Blanket-enforcement days are reported to have reduced injury collisions by 10 percent countywide in 2013, he said. “That’s huge,” he said. “When you can reduce injury collisions by 10 percent, that’s a really big deal.”