MANSFIELD — The Richland County Sheriff’s Office was awarded nearly $64,000 in traffic safety grants Tuesday.
The Ohio Traffic Safety Office awarded the office $38,000 to use toward its Impaired Driving Enforcement Program. The other $25,000 was earmarked for the Selective Traffic Enforcement Program.
The federal grant money is available only for jurisdictions who qualify based on the number of traffic fatalities within the county. A total of 15 people died in 2015 from motor vehicle accidents, according to the Richland County Coroner’s Office 2015 report. Seven of those deaths involved either drugs or alcohol.
The grants are also awarded to counties that have a high number of injuries related to vehicular crashes.
As of October, the Ohio Department of Public Safety has reported 609 vehicular crashes that resulted in an injury, five of them resulted in fatalities.
Major Joe Masi said the sheriff’s office has received this grant money for the last 20 years.
“Being a county agency, there is a greater chance that we can apply for the grant every year,” Masi wrote in an email.
Masi added that the grant money is to be used to compensate deputies required to work during overtime hours, specifically during holiday events and high school proms and homecomings.
“During these times, it is more about making a presence to get people to slow down and be more cautious than it is to actually write a ticket. The officers that sign up are on overtime and being paid by this grant, it is not costing county government any money to have this extra patrol out and on the road,” wrote Masi.
