Glendale police receive $295,000 state grant to fund traffic safety operations

The Glendale Police Department recently received a $295,000 grant from California’s Office of Traffic Safety to fund a yearlong effort to reduce traffic injuries and deaths in the city.

The money will be used to help fund three DUI checkpoints and 12 saturation patrols the department will conduct as well as 16 traffic-enforcement operations that will target distracted driving, speeding and pedestrian safety.

Officers will also receive specialized training to identify impaired drivers and administer field-sobriety tests as part of the grant.

Sgt. Craig Tweedy of the department’s traffic bureau said safety grants do have a significant impact on lowering the number of collisions in the city.

“It allows us to take resources and strategically place them for certain types of operations … whether it’s DUI, traffic, speed or distracted driving,” he said.

Join the conversation on Facebook >>

Glendale police received a similar grant last year that totaled $440,000.

Tweedy said this year’s grant amount is lower because the department has seen a decrease in traffic injuries and DUI arrests.

“[The] Office of Traffic Safety measures the amount of collisions, injuries and fatalities for the cities that apply for the grant,” Tweedy said. “The reduction in what we got is primarily due to the lowering of those injuries and collisions.”

DUI arrests this year are on track to be lower than last year — 543 arrests were made through September of last year, and there were 343 arrests made during the same period this year, according to statistics released by Glendale Police Department.

Overall, there has been a slight uptick in traffic collisions, with 1,850 reported through September of this year compared to 1,847 last year. Of the collisions this year, 444 of them resulted in injury. while there were 482 during the same period last year.

--

Andy Nguyen, andy.nguyen@latimes.com

Twitter: @Andy_Truc