5. PROGRAM EVALUATION (continued)
5.1.9 Officer's Action
Finally, each officer was asked to indicate the action taken as a result of the stop. Specifically, the officer was asked to indicate if a ticket was issued, if the ticket facsimile that contained literature on the dangers of speeding was given to the driver, or if both a ticket and the literature were given. Officers from the two cities handled the question somewhat differently. The results are given in Table 20.
Table 20 shows that officers in Peoria ticketed 5 percent of the stopped speeders – 3.2 percent of all those stopped received a ticket only, and 1.8 percent received both a ticket and the project speeding literature (the ticket facsimile). No request was made on the police stop form for the officer to indicate the type of ticket issued. Since the stop was made for a speeding offense, it was assumed that any ticket issued was also for a speeding offense.
In all, 96.8 percent of the stopped Peoria speeders received the project literature. As indicated previously, the primary intent of this activity was to have the police officer provide information on the dangers of speeding – at least initially. Peoria officers issued tickets only in exceptional cases when the driver was unusually flagrant in disobeying the law.
The officers in Phoenix used a more traditional method of ticketing. In addition, several officers included on the form not only tickets issued for speeding but also tickets issued for other offenses. The “other” category in Table 20 includes all of these “other” ticketing situations (i.e., those that did not involve speeding). These other offenses included license irregularities, lack of safety belts, etc. As in Peoria , if no specific offense was listed, speeding was assumed since that was the focus of the study. The following listing provides a summary of all known ticketing by the Phoenix police during their special enforcement program:
| Ticket Type |
Count |
% of Total Police Actions |
| Speeding |
460 |
59.1% |
| Speeding warning |
10 |
1.3% |
| Insurance |
29 |
3.7% |
| Safety belt |
28 |
3.6% |
| License |
18 |
2.3% |
| Stop sign |
2 |
0.2% |
| Registration |
2 |
0.2% |
| Drugs |
1 |
0.1% |
In addition, 342 individuals (43.9% of the drivers stopped in Phoenix ) were given project literature. Of the Phoenix drivers who were stopped, 298 (38.3%) received literature alone.
Table 20. Officer's Action ( Peoria and Phoenix )
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