BY JOHN BRICE
THE LAFAYETTE SUN
VALLEY — Valley Council Member for District 4 Desmond Reece raised concerns over police officers exceeding the speed limit during the Valley City Council Meeting on Monday, June 9.
“One of my citizens, they said how they are concerned about how officers are speeding,” he said. “I just wanted to ask if you had anything in place concerning speeding officers.”
Police Chief Stacy Shirey addressed Reece’s concerns.
“Preemptively, about two years ago, I started conducting department meetings,” he said. “Once a quarter, myself and all of my admin meet with every officer. We go over things like speeding, policy, state law. By our policy, they can’t drive fast unless they are running lights and sirens. If a citizen files a complaint, it is treated like any other complaint. We take it in, turn it over to the patrol captain, and he works it like any other investigation.”
Shirey went on to clarify how concerns over speeding officers are handled by his department.
“In recent memory, the only complaint that we have had a citizen come in and file was actually filed by my assistant chief where he saw one of our officers speeding, and we actually wrote that officer up because it was a valid complaint,” he said. “The only complaints that we have gotten over the last few years have been a few phone calls here and there. Usually, they are not very specific, so we can’t do a lot with that. Now, [in the] Facebook world, that is a whole other planet that we don’t deal with.”
Shirley instructed the public on how they should go about dealing with the speeding police officers if they encounter them.
“There are steps in place and we deal with that accordingly,” he said. “If we get a complaint, we try to figure it out. During the day there are a lot of officers working. Those cars all have numbers. So if a citizen sees a car number and can let us know that you saw car 3518 at the particular time. Make a mental note [of those things] because we have got different sectors, different cars, different types of vehicles.”
