DEARBORN, Mich. (WXYZ) — Dearborn police are sparking conversation around the way they've been conducting traffic stops lately.
A video making rounds on social media shows an officer posted at an intersection wearing plain clothing and signaling uniformed officers nearby.
"It’s pros and cons with everything. It can help with safety and everything but I don’t know,” said driver Tamia Williams.
Lt. Jason Skoczylas says it's a part of a targeted plan to educate drivers about the dangers of distracted driving.
"We’re doing everything we can in our power to focus on this aspect of traffic enforcement. Whether it's distracted driving, aggressive driving, people on their cell phones,” said Skoczylas.
He says it's just one of many tactics they're using to address a rise in crashes and citizen complaints they've been tracking.
“All our citizens, the most, the highest complaints are traffic safety, so we do want to send that message that we hear you and we want traffic safety for our citizens, people passing through the town, for kids playing in the street and everything, we want people to be safe in our town,” said Skoczylas.
Officers will be at random intersections at undisclosed dates and times as one of the measures using with the primary goal of educating.
“We have several measures- education, which I’ve discussed about, engineering with traffic bump outs, we have speed humps things like that, changing intersections, light patterns," said Skoczylas.
For those who feel they are taking away from resources, they want it to be known that a state grant specifically for distracted driving is supporting their efforts.
“This doesn’t mean we’re not paying attention to everything else going on in our town. We have dozens and dozens of officers on the streets at all times in our city,” Skoczylas said.
The undercover enforcement will go on for the next three weeks.
“I kinda like it because these younger kids they’ve been distracted like crazy and I kinda don’t like it because I feel like there is bigger fish and bigger stuff for them to do,” said Hyder Al-Huri, owner of Halal Pizza.
