DPS to conduct zero-tolerance speed crackdown in Phoenix

PHOENIX — The Arizona Department of Public Safety will ticket all drivers who are caught speeding during a 30-day operation that will begin next week.

“I would just tell everybody that if you’re going to drive like that on the (Loop) 101, you’re going to encounter a state trooper,” DPS Director Col. Frank Milstead told KTAR News 92.3 FM’s Bruce St. James and Pamela Hughes on Friday.

“We will be out in our unmarked cars. It’s Operation No Need for Speed.”

Milstead said the crackdown will focus on Loops 101, 202 and 303 with one goal: Get people to slow down.

“I’m not asking a lot,” he said. “I’m just asking you to dial it back to 75, 73 – just keep it in the normal range.”

He said the decision to start the enforcement was spurred by several exceptionally violent crashes that have happened in past weeks. All of them had one component in common — speed — along with other factors.

“Unfortunately, at the speeds people are driving – 80 to 85 mph – when something goes wrong – and it will go wrong, somebody will do something inappropriate – things go wrong real fast and real violently.”

Milstead said the operation has nothing to do with meeting ticketing quotas.

“I am not a real big ticket guy,” he said. “At DPS, if you get stopped and a trooper gives you a warning or a ticket, we count that contact that same.”

But despite Milstead not being big on citations, his troopers will be issuing them at his orders.

“This is a zero-tolerance enforcement program,” he said. “Everybody will get a citation and that’s coming from me, so if you get one, I made the trooper do it.”

He also said the tickets being doled out won’t be for small fines.

“It’ll be a below-average day for you because, at those speeds, they’re expensive,” he said.

 

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