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personnel support should be assigned to the division. The Field Operations commander, in
collaboration with the Traffic Division supervisor, should examine the list of duties and remove all
that do not directly involve the specific mission of this division. With the narrowly defined list of
responsibilities identified, administration support, either in the form of civilian staff, Community
Service Officer, or dedicated volunteers (or a combination of all three) should be added to the
division. The administrative burden on the supervisors appears heavy, leaving little discretionary
time available to develop plans and coordinate department-wide efforts on the scale being
recommended. With administrative support, the division corporal could dedicate additional time
towards the development and implementation of traffic safety plans and spend more time on patrol
supervising and coordinating the execution of these plans. The use of administrative resources in
this fashion will yield dividends in the form of reduced traffic collisions and injuries and an increase
in traffic safety in the community.
Traffic personnel should be deployed during a wider span of hours. Consideration should be given
to providing seven-day coverage, as well as increasing the number of hours the personnel work on
their overlapped days. A simple policy would be to require no more than a six-hour overlap of their
shift times.
A greater emphasis should be placed on the engineering and educational components of traffic
safety. Currently, the division appears to be primarily focused on enforcement; it should embrace
the other facets of the strategic plan more aggressively. This would involve a more robust
educational program as well as a more coordinated approach to roadway engineering.
Other units of the MHPD can be leveraged in support of these functions. For example, an SRO could
be utilized to conduct traffic safety seminars in Morgan Hill schools. Similarly, patrol personnel
could be given fixed responsibility to monitor and patrol intersections that experience a higher than
average number of accidents. Team supervisors could be required to develop engineering
recommendations (signage, pavement markings, etc.) based upon their knowledge of the area and
traffic patterns and submit them to the Traffic Division for evaluation. The point here is not to
burden the limited resources of the traffic division, but to prioritize their time, diffuse the
responsibility of traffic safety throughout the department, and leverage the specific expertise of all
personnel involved.
The division could expand the performance management approach (using traffic data to drive
deployment and enforcement decisions) toward traffic accidents and injuries to include more
robust education directed towards high-risk drivers as well as redesign of high-risk roadways. The
Traffic Division would develop the plans necessary to focus the effort of the rest of the department.
This approach would entail the creation of written traffic safety plans, monthly reports using traffic
crash data to identify times/days/locations/causes of traffic crashes, and holding patrol shifts
accountable for implementing this plan.
For example, driving while intoxicated is undoubtedly a source of numerous accidents and accident
injuries in the community. The Traffic Division ends its shift at 5:00 p.m., earlier than most DWI
incidents occur. CPSM is not recommending that this unit extend its shift into the early morning