This sedan got hung up on the Hwy 1 safety fence near Main Street and Las Vegas, on Monday, Aug. 5. Police said the distracted driver was looking at a cell phone and didn’t see that a car had stopped to turn left until the last second. There were no injuries. Photo by Neil Farrell
“Casey Jones, you better, watch your speed…”
While Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead may have been singing about a different kind of speed, Morro Bay police are cautioning motorists to slow down on the roads, and they have some new tools and personnel brought in specifically for traffic enforcement.
Police Chief Amy Watkins said they recently got two new BMW motorcycles they had ordered some time ago using federal grant monies but had been delayed until July, when they finally arrived.
She also has hired a couple of retired police officers experienced in traffic enforcement to come in and help with the program.
And it’s the public that’s driving this emphasis on road safety.
“Morro Bay has a history of motorcycle officers,” Chief Watkins said. They first got the 2-wheelers in 2007, and the officers who took up the patrols wrote hundreds of tickets for all kinds of violations, making an immediate impact.
They got a pair of electric motorcycles a few years ago and have continued with the cycle patrols. The Chief said she’s sent officers to special training programs to become certified with the motorcycles, but those officers since retired or otherwise moved on to new departments.
The two original gas-powered bikes essentially have become obsolete, in need of repairs, but good luck finding parts. “Over the past two years,” she explained, “they needed maintenance and with the BMWs — until two years ago — there were parts available to fix them.”
She added that since then, “We can no longer maintain them” for a lack of replacement parts. They sold one bike [with a shot clutch] and still have the other one, along with the two electric bikes, which have their uses.
The e-bikes, “are OK in town,” Chief Watkins said. “You can’t get them out on the highway, they run out of power. The electric bikes are limited in their capabilities.”
Hence the order for two new gas bikes, paid for with Community Oriented Policing (COPS) grant funds, which the department gets every year from the Federal Government intended for equipment buys.
They ordered the new bikes some 10-months ago from BMW in Germany going through a dealership in Fresno, but like most everything these days that comes in from overseas, they ran into delays.
“They sat in New Jersey for three to four months because of a recall,” Watkins said. “That had to get fixed first.” The bikes finally arrived in early July, and after some new decals and added equipment, including a LiDAR system, they hit the streets.
LiDAR, or “light detection and ranging,” is a sensing system like radar, but utilizing a high-speed laser instead of radio waves. With LiDAR an officer can clock the speed of a car that’s in motion towards them, even as the officer’s vehicle is also moving.
So, an officer heading south can clock a vehicle going in the opposite direction and have them pegged for speeding before they even know there’s a cop coming their way.
It’s been around more than 60 years and has a wide range of applications beyond speed enforcement.
The new focus for the department stems from the public’s complaints going back to 2022. “We get a lot of traffic complaints,” Chief Watkins said. “Ironwood [Avenue] has a huge speeding issue.”
She added that Piney Way and Radcliff Street do as well. “We get a lot of speeding complaints.” She passes the complaints down to the patrol team who then decide where to focus enforcement on a given day.
They discussed how to slow people down, even presented the issue at public meetings, led by Cmdr. Tony Mosqueda, where the concerns were discussed with the people who live in the neighborhoods. Those meetings explored how to slow people down, the Chief said. Stepped up enforcement rose to the top.
“Our goal is to make people aware,” she said of the stepped-up enforcement effort, “and to change the behavior.”
She also has hired two extra officers, retired traffic cops, to bolster the ranks. As retirees, the pair are limited to a certain number of hours they can work and still collect their public employee retirement.
“They fill the gap and assist the police officers and the community with this type of much needed enforcement,” Chief Watkins said.
For police officers there’s a special retiree program where they can be hired as “extra help” and can work roughly what a half-time employee would — 960 hours a year.
The move is also tied in with a high number of accidents and hit-and-runs, too. “We get our share of traffic accidents,” Chief Watkins said. Speeding causes nearly a third of them.
“Our goal is to change the behavior of people who drive too fast, or drive distracted.”
A prime example of that last one happened on the day of EBN’s interview with the Chief, as a car was heading south on Main Street at Las Vegas. According to an officer on scene, the driver was looking at a cell phone and didn’t see that another car was stopped in the road waiting to turn left. The distracted driver swerved right at the last second and ran the car up onto the highway safety fence and got hung up. There were no injuries reported.
Their patrols will also be on Hwy 1, as the police have an agreement with the Highway Patrol to respond to accidents and do enforcement on the stretch from Hwy 41 to Toro Creek Road, at the northern City Limits.
This came from the City’s efforts in the 1990s to reduce the speeds on that stretch, which includes two stoplights, two left turns onto side streets, and the entrance to a State Park campground used by RVers. That effort had to go through the State Legislature via special legislation carried by former Assemblyman Tom Bordonaro (now the County Tax Assessor).
But they aren’t limited to just that stretch. Chief Watkins explained that as a law enforcement officer, she could go anywhere in the state and write a traffic citation. If readers pass a city patrol car on the freeway, don’t be surprised if you get pulled over, even though you might think a city cop’s jurisdiction ends at the town line.
“Law enforcement is law enforcement,” Chief Watkins said, “it [their authority] doesn’t end at the City Limits.”
For folks with a bit of a lead-foot, it might be a good idea to stick to the speed limit in Morro Bay. And don’t think this is a fad that will end when the grant money runs out.
“I hear the complaints,” Chief Watkins said. “This is not a temporary program.”
She plans to send another officer to motorcycle patrol school (the closest one is in Santa Maria), this year. “It’s a very difficult course,” she said. “It’s one of the most difficult to pass. Firearms instructor and motorcycle training officer are the two hardest.”
She said it boils down to outputs vs. outcomes. “I understand the difference between the two,” she said. “We always look for the outcome. If we can change the behavior, then traffic collisions go down, complaints go down and people feel safer, that’s a positive outcome.
“Outputs would be writing tickets. We are more interested in the outcomes over the outputs.”
