Flickr photo: myelectricsheepThe Ingleside Police Station has a new captain and he's out of the blocks with a very progressive pedestrian safety agenda. Captain David Lazar, who just assumed his post at the Ingleside Station on April 18th, will conduct a sting on motorists who fail to yield to pedestrians in crosswalks at five locations today from 2:30-8:00 pm.
Asked to explain the sting, Lazar said, "I'm the new Captain here and this is one of the enforcement strategies that has proven successful; people get the idea when they see a sting like this."
When asked whether there was a particular incident motivating the sting, Captain Lazar said, "Our traffic collisions have been low and our pedestrian fatalities have been low and I want to keep it that way. We want to make sure it's not acceptable for people to just blow through intersections."
"A lot of the police captains are getting religion on this," said Walk SF President Manish Champsee. "The traffic company does it when they have time, but it's great to see captains using their personnel to contribute to it."
Champsee added that when captains conduct these stings they get a lot of tickets and that's a good thing "or a bad thing, depending on how you look at it." Captain Lazar echoed Champsee's sentiment and said even if with advance publicity on our blog or otherwise, they would have ample scofflaws to choose from.
"You could do a big announcement right now and we're still going to write a hundred citations. People are not stopping for pedestrians, it's dangerous."
Ingleside Station officers will be joined by the citywide traffic company and will target:
- The Cortland St corridor, from Mission St to Gates St
- Mission St and Highland Street
- Allemany Blvd and San Juan Ave
- Geneva Ave and London St
- Bosworth St and Arlington St
