By: Lydia Crawley
The Parsons Advocate
The City of Parsons Police Department has begun placing speed detection devices at key points around the City in an effort to combat speeding in residential areas, according to City of Parsons Police Chief Kevin Keplinger. Keplinger updated the City of Parsons Council during their regular meeting August 20th on the measure his department has undertaken to curb speeding in residential areas with the start of the school year. “Realizing that it is that time of year again, I am adjusting the schedule. I’m going to probably start coming out at six in the morning to start hitting the school zones, the bus areas, the kid pick up areas pretty heavily,” Keplinger said.
Keplinger said the Department currently has two signs in use in the Quality Hill area.. “I have two of them right now,” Keplinger said. “We have them up right now on Quality Street to kind of monitor that situation.”
The units are mobile, according to Keplinger, which makes them able to be placed anywhere around the City and moved when deemed necessary. “What we are going to be doing right now is putting them out mobile,” Keplinger said.
Keplinger said the the units were not convential speed cameras and do not take pictures, issue or mail citations. According to Keplinger, the units only record speed and log what time and what speed was traveled, not what specific vehicle it was. “I just want to reinforce, they do not take a picture,” Keplinger said. “They do not mail a ticket. What they do is they record the speed and record the time in fifteen minute increments.”
Keplinger said the units are designed to run 24 hours a day for seven days before needing recharged and placed back on site. During that time, Keplinger said, the units will record traffic patterns. “What it will do for that seven day period is to take a look and determine when traffic, the speed that traffic is flowing and sometimes you can get some anomalies,” Keplinger said. “We’ve had it out on Webbers Lane before and recorded some rather extreme speeds and then go back to 911 and then realize that was an ambulance.”
There was no word on when the initiative would conclude.
