Increased traffic patrols will be motoring the streets of Zanesville with extra-duty shifts due to three grants awarded to the Zanesville Police Department.

The Ohio Traffic Safety Office through the Department of Transportation recently awarded three grants to the ZPD to increase traffic patrols from October through September 2020

There are three different grants that stem from the Impaired Driving Enforcement Program (IDEP), the Selective Traffic Enforcement Program (STEP) and Drugged Driving Enforcement Program (DDEP).

According to Captain Scott Comstock from the Zanesville Police Department, ZPD qualified for the grants based on a certain number of fatal accidents in the area between 2016 and 2018.

The grants are reimbursement grants that allow the police department to offer traffic assignments as overtime to its officers. Once each month ends, Comstock is tasked with submitting the overtime hours to receive reimbursement.

Increased traffic patrols will be scattered throughout the months, but the months that have a holiday or special event, like high school and college homecoming weekends, will have targeted traffic patrols during those weekends.

“There’s higher probabilities, there’s more likelihood of impaired driving, there’s more activity on the road due to the events,” Comstock said.

With the increased traffic patrols, Comstock clarified that the extra shift will not take away from everyday patrol.

“All normal services patrol wise to the city will be unaffected by this. It is additional manpower covered by overtime,” he said. “It’s just additional enforcement.”

Each month, patrolmen will have the opportunity to sign up for the extra duty traffic shifts. In addition to special local events and holidays, the traffic enforcement will also increase during national traffic campaigns like “Click It or Ticket” and “Driver Sober or Get Pulled Over.”

While each grant has specific criteria, Comstock said the patrols will be scattered throughout the city to focus on various streets.