Enlist Enforcement: Safe Routes To School (SRTS) Programs
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Typically, SRTS initiatives develop over a period of years. Below is a list of seven typical steps in the early life of a SRTS program. Law enforcement agencies and personnel are likely to have something to offer every step of the way. For more detailed information regarding how different officer types can be involved, choose an officer type from the list on the left.
- SRTS Step 1: Help Bring Together the Right People
- SRTS Step 2: Participate in a Kick-off Meeting to Set a Vision
- SRTS Step 3: Help Gather Information and Identify Issues
- SRTS Step 4: Help Identify Solutions and Potential Interventions
- SRTS Step 5: Help Develop a Plan
- SRTS Step 6: Help Get the Plan and People Moving
- SRTS Step 7: Evaluate, adjust and sustain the effort
SRTS Step 1: Help Bring Together the Right People.
A SRTS steering committee ensures broad-based community representation of the community's needs. Members offer differing backgrounds and expertise, i.e. school principal, parents, teachers, local health officials, transportation planners and engineers, students and others.
How Law Enforcement Officers Can Help:
- Join the SRTS steering committee.
- Use your expertise. Law enforcement officers are often in touch with sectors of the community that may be marginalized or less involved in community affairs, and they are often more in touch with the pulse of a community and can speak to issues related to safety and crime concerns.
SRTS Step 2: Participate in a Kick-off Meeting to Set a Vision.
An initial meeting determines the vision for a local SRTS program.
How Law Enforcement Officers Can Help:
- Share your knowledge and access to resources. Ensure that the vision for the local SRTS program takes advantage of existing youth or community-related law enforcement initiatives that are already underway in the school catchment area, such as youth crime prevention programs, DARE programs, gang prevention programs, etc.
- Answer questions the community may have about traffic safety and crime hot spots. Stranger danger may come up as an important concern. (see personal security)
SRTS Step 3: Help Gather Information and Identify Issues.
In developing a SRTS plan, real or perceived issues by the community must be considered.
How Law Enforcement Officers Can Help:
- Access data. Law enforcement agencies and patrol officers have access to information that will be of value to the SRTS team as they build a targeted program. This data might include:
- Pedestrian, bicycle and motor vehicle crash data in the community and/or vicinity of the school
- Local patterns of traffic violations
- Positive impacts resulting from prior traffic law enforcement initiatives.
- Share anecdotal information. Officers have much to contribute based upon their daily observation of human and driver behavior in the street environment.
- Assist the SRTS steering committee in evaluating the safety of existing walking and biking conditions. Assist to:
- Identify problem intersections and areas
- Establish safer bicycling and walking routes for students to use
SRTS Step 4: Help Identify Solutions and Potential Interventions.
Every member of the steering committee offers a intervention or solution worth considering.
How Law Enforcement Officers Can Help:
- Provide guidance regarding the effectiveness of various enforcement methods.
- Suggest ways enforcement can support existing or planned activities planned in the areas of engineering, education and encouragement.
SRTS Step 5: Help Develop a Plan.
Prioritizing solutions and formalizing a plan are important next steps and often a requirement for submitting a grant application to various funding sources.
How Law Enforcement Officers Can Help:
- Help the community prioritize recommendations into a sound SRTS plan.
- Formally endorse the plan. Formal endorsement of the plan and proposed activities by the law enforcement agency may help ensure that it gets SRTS funding by the State.
SRTS Step 6: Help Get the Plan and People Moving.
Plans are only effective when they are followed by actions. The team should start recruiting people to help move on the action items identified in the plan.
How Law Enforcement Officers Can Help:
- Implement a recommendation. Law enforcement officers are typically action oriented. By the very nature of your work, you tend to be the first to address project issues.
- Motivate others. You can be helpful on a SRTS steering committee as a motivator that sets the project into high gear.
SRTS Step 7: Evaluate, adjust and sustain the effort.
Ongoing evaluation and adjustment is important to a successful program.
How Law Enforcement Officers Can Help:
- Determine if the methods and level of effort being applied is having the desired effect.
- Help ensure that appropriate and efficient program evaluation occurs and that the proper adjustments are made.