Police rethink speed traps
Town publicizes enforcement sites
It is a familiar scene. A police cruiser lurks behind a set of trees, clocking the speed of cars passing by. Drivers slam on their brakes as they see the cruiser, sending lines of cars behind them into a frenzy. They hold their breath, hoping to keep their spotless or not-so-spotless driving records intact.
But in a new and unusual move in traffic enforcement, Belmont police have thrown out this traditional model of speed trapping and enemy making. For the past month, they have told residents when and where they will be looking for speeders.
Under the new philosophy, the department sends a weekly message to residents via the town's e-mail list serve, website, and local newspaper, citing which streets they will monitor for speeding, running red lights, and other traffic violations.
Beginning last Thursday and through this Thursday, for example, they will focus on Francis Street, School Street, and Belmont Street, among others. Last week they patrolled White, Lexington, and Waverly streets .
While many people raise their eyebrows at this get-out-of-jail-free card for drivers looking to bend the rules, police say people are self-enforcing, which is better than paying an officer to wait on a road in a cruiser. And, in an unexpected side benefit, more than 100 Belmont residents have written to the police after learning of the new policy, suggesting the streets they think should be on next week's list for enforcement.
Lieutenant Chris Donahue, who is in charge of traffic enforcement for Belmont, said he created the policy a month ago as a solution to budget cuts in his department. With just one traffic officer left, down from four, the police could not monitor every street they wanted to.
Donahue figured that if they focused on five or six trouble spots a week and told people they would be there, people would slow down even when police were not lurking in the shadows.
''I had to find a way to work with less," Donahue said. ''People say, 'Why would we do that and let people know where we are?' I say, because if we get one person to slow down, the project was a success for the week."
Residents have a mix of skepticism and optimism toward the new philosophy and have flooded the department with feedback.
Margaret Waters, a resident of Orchard Street, wrote in an e-mail to Globe NorthWest last week that the police have been very responsive to her requests and that the new policy is working.
''I'm really impressed with how open the Belmont traffic team [is] to residents' input. I e-mailed them last week to say we have a problem on our street of people speeding down to avoid a light at Common Street and School Street," she wrote. ''Within a week, they had set up a speed monitor to remind people that it's a [20 miles-per-hour] zone."
However Sandra Rhone, a resident of Trowbridge Street, which many people use as a cut-through to get to Belmont High School, said she thinks Belmont's new policy is predictable and counterproductive.
''I don't think it's working. I'm going to fly if I know that they're not around," Rhone said. ''If I know they're going to be at White Street, I'm going to be sure to speed down another street."
Rhone said that just last Wednesday her Chihuahua was clipped by traffic moving much more quickly than the 20 miles per hour required in a school zone, when the dog ran out of the house.
''I called the police and they say we'll send people over. But they only have like two cruisers and I haven't seen a thing," Rhone said.
Gilbert Moore, a spokesman for the US Justice Department's Community Oriented Policing Services, said that while he does not know of any other departments that send out similar warnings, Belmont's action is in accord with the general philosophy of community policing, which focuses on treating residents as partners in keeping communities safe. It is a philosophy that spread around the country over the past 15 years, in an effort to gain public trust in police after the breakdown of police-civilian relations from the 1960s onward.
Moore said Belmont's philosophy mirrors the idea that has led police in Washington, D.C., to tell residents where they place cameras to monitor traffic. There is also new technology installed nationwide in cruisers in the 1990s, which allows police to fill out paperwork electronically while sitting in their cars on the side of the road with no intention of stopping speeders. Just having the cruisers there slows down traffic, Moore said.
The most recent report by Moore's agency on ''Speeding in Residential Areas" states that this method works, as long as it does not become too predictable.
''You must balance making the public aware of the enforcement campaign against allowing drivers to anticipate precisely where and when officers are conducting enforcement," the report says.
Donahue said that there are dozens of people like Rhone who are unhappy about the traffic on their street, many who have just begun complaining to police since reading about their new policy.
As a result, he is establishing a precinct captain in each of Belmont's 13 regions, who can funnel requests and bring police, town engineers, and other department heads the most frequent complaints.
''There are some things we can't help," Donahue said. ''You just spent $800,000 on a home and school starts and now you have 50,000 cars in front of your house.
''But we can check it out if it's not safe," Donahue said, ''and figure out how we can make it better."
The new traffic policy is just one of several unorthodox steps in community policing that Belmont has tried over the past five years.
Other efforts include giving out baseball-card-like identity cards for each member of the department and a prize to encourage kids to collect them all.
The department's website also has more information than almost any other department site in the region.
Donahue said the new approach to traffic enforcement ''originated from our lack of people in our traffic department and we went on from there to supply the town with the best services for less. ''We'll try different things," he added. ''Whatever works."
Dorian Block can be reached at dblock@globe.com. 