Prioritizing Traffic Safety in Your Department

Significant increases in traffic crashes and fatalities occurred over the last several years as law enforcement engagement in traffic safety/enforcement diminished. Strong leadership is required to re-focus officers on traffic safety and crash prevention. This session will discuss the importance of traffic enforcement as a critical law enforcement function with an emphasis on how to engage officers. This session will focus on the necessity of conducting “meaningful” traffic enforcement while continuing to educate the public. The Fairfax County Police Department will be used as a case study, showing how they were able to re-engage their police officers in a way that explained the “why,” which changed their behaviors and yielded significant reductions in fatal crashes in 2023.