Photograph by Kathy De La Torre
Deputies Brad Davis (left) and Carl Neusel are a major part of the reason the Westside Substation is issuing more traffic citations.
Additional patrol officers cause citations to increase
By Rebecca Ray
If it seems that more officers have been patrolling the streets of Saratoga lately, it's because they have been. Since late November, when the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office assigned two more deputies to traffic patrol, four deputies have been handing out mounds of tickets for traffic violations in the city and addressing the growing concerns about traffic from residents.
Under the old system, Deputy Steven Grisenti, who worked from a motorcycle, and Deputy Greg Taylor, who worked from a car, handled traffic patrol in Saratoga, while six other officers worked beat patrol. One traffic patrol officer worked Mondays through Thursdays from 1:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m., while the other traffic patrol officer worked Tuesdays through Fridays, from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Under the new system, Grisenti and Deputies Bradley Davis, Carl Neusel and Kristen Tarabetz all work as traffic patrol deputies, while six other officers still do beat patrol. Davis and Neusel patrol from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on weekdays, while Grisenti and Tarabetz work weekdays from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. One deputy from each shift works Mondays through Thursdays, while the other deputy works Tuesdays through Fridays.
All four officers are on duty Tuesdays through Thursdays, the time when residents complain the most about traffic violations, Deputy Pete Evangel said. The hours are also staggered to cover morning and evening commute times, Evangel said.
In addition to focusing on school zones and the residential areas with parking problems, the four traffic patrol deputies are handling residents' biggest complaints about traffic--illegal parking, unsafe speed and moving violations, which include following cars too closely, making unsafe lane changes and running red lights and stop signs--by citing more drivers for these violations.
In October, the two traffic patrol officers and six beat patrol officers wrote 24 citations for parking, 278 for unsafe speed and 185 for moving violations. The amount of tickets they wrote in November stayed much the same--30 for parking, 294 for speed and 187 for moving violations.
But in December, after the sheriff's office added two patrol deputies, almost twice as many tickets were handed out--118 for parking, 492 for speed and 231 for moving violations. Traffic patrol officers, not beat patrol officers, wrote more than half of all tickets for moving violations, almost three-fourths of all tickets for unsafe speed and 90 percent of all the tickets for illegal parking.
Kristen Tarabetz
Although Evangel said he thought there would be fewer citations and accidents in the future, he also said that the accident rate would depend on what causes the accidents, and added that it may take as many as 12 months to see a significant change in accidents and tickets.
Traffic patrol deputies in Saratoga have also been doing court-enacted traffic enforcement, which involves two units, instead of one, monitoring intersections. With two units monitoring an intersection, one officer can watch for drivers who violate traffic laws and radio the other officer, who waits in a unit in a concealed place on the other side of the intersection, to cite the driver. This way, the officer who cites the driver does not have to expose him or herself to oncoming traffic.
Currently, Grisenti is the only traffic patrol officer who works from a motorcycle, but Davis, who completed two weeks of motorcycle training and was certified in December to become a motorcycle officer, will work from a bike once one arrives for him.
Tarabetz, who has always wanted to become a motorcycle officer, will go through motorcycle training in February to become the first female motorcycle officer in the department. Once her motorcycle arrives, the department will arrange its schedules so that two motorcycle officers and two patrol car officers enforce traffic laws in Saratoga.
The department ranked Tarabetz as No. 1 on the list of officers who applied to become motorcycle officers, according to Capt. Jeff Miles of the Westside Substation. Tarabetz, who has been with the sheriff's office since 1986, has worked in the West Valley division for the last five years as a patrol deputy, traffic officer and traffic investigator, and is a member of the major accident-investigation team.
Davis and Neusel graduated from the police academy in June 1998, worked in the court services division and then patrolled the west side. Both deputies have worked vacation relief, in which they learned different beats by taking over the shifts of deputies on vacation. Neusel was also a detective in the investigative bureau at the substation last year.
Although Davis and Tarabetz knew how to ride motorcycles before training, they have to undergo training because police motorcycles differ from regular motorcycles, Miles said. Davis, who has ridden bikes off and on since he was 17, rides his Yamaha sport bike when the weather is warm, almost once each week. "I figured, 'What a great job. I know how to ride motorcycles. I might as well try to get in,'" Davis said.
Davis also applied for the position because he liked to investigate collisions, which all traffic officers do. Davis likes collision investigation because it helps him learn traffic patterns and because the circumstances that surround each collision differ, he said.
Saratoga, California Since 1955
