Did you notice a build-up of law enforcement in Coronado yesterday? Were you one of the 231 citations? If you are a member of eCoronado.com, you probably read the warning we published last Sunday. If you didn’t get the warning, be sure to join our newsletter. It was also shared in the City Manager’s report, the City of Coronado Twitter feed and sent out via email to Coronado Unified School District families via Edline.
Traffic officers from Coronado PD, Chula Vista PD, Carlsbad PD, La Mesa PD, National City PD, San Diego County Sheriff’s Dept., San Diego PD, and San Diego State PD conducted an operation in Coronado from 7:15am to 11:45am. They wrote 231 citations and towed 5 vehicles.
Citations were issued for many different safety violations such as not stopping at stop signs or lights non-working equipment, speed or no left turn violations. The vehicles towed were due to unlicensed drivers or driving with a suspended license. Any income generated by citation penalties are returned to the issuing officer’s respective agency, not the City of Coronado. If a Chula Vista officer issued a violation in Coronado, the money would go to the City of Chula Vista.
We spoke to Lea Corbin (Community Relations/Training) of the Coronado Police Department and asked her a few questions about the operation.
eC: How would the Coronado Police Department rate the effectiveness of the operation?
LC: The operation was successful because the officers cited several severe violations.
eC: Overall during the 4 hours, did it run smoothly between the multiple agencies involved and coverage of the city?
LC: They do this once a month in different cities with different traffic unit officers. They have a briefing in the location and that agency (Coronado Police Department) will brief the non-CPD officers on where they receive complaints. We have residents that call or complain regarding areas where they see speeding, illegal turns, double-parking at the schools, collisions, etc. So when the officers came in yesterday, we briefed them on those areas.
eC: Some people were not pleased because they were involved in some of the citations or didn’t like the “build-up”. Can you comment on those experiences?
LC: Traffic is a major complain here in the City of Coronado. Sometimes we have to take different paths in addressing these issues. By participating in the operation, it allowed us to address several areas that we receive complaints about at one time.
eC: Do you plan on doing more operations like this in Coronado? Do they happen monthly in Coronado or monthly all over San Diego?
LC: This operation takes place in a different city every month to increase awareness and cut down on violations. It rotates through different agencies and that notification does take place through the City of Coronado and schools. People were cited for violations that were observed. We are here to do a job and to protect and serve.
We spoke to two residents that received tickets yesterday in Coronado and both were not happy about the tickets, but agreed they were in violation of the law.
Posts a few days before the operation via Twitter:
What did you think of this operation? Let us know in the comments.
