ROCKLAND, MA — The Rockland Police Department has completed a pedestrian crosswalk decoy enforcement program aimed at improving pedestrian safety throughout the community.
The program is part of a Municipal Road Safety grant awarded to the department by the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security Highway Safety Division.
A plain-clothes officer acted as a pedestrian while another officer in uniform waited in a patrol unit a few hundred feet down the road for any violations.
Crosswalk decoy operations took place at several high traffic volume areas in town, including crosswalks on Union Street, Plain Street by the Senior Center and by the schools.
Officers issued citations for failure to yield or stop for pedestrians in crosswalks and handed out pamphlets containing statistics about crosswalk safety.
The pamphlets noted that 18 percent of all traffic deaths in 2023 were pedestrian and 74 percent of pedestrian fatalities occurred at locations that were not intersections.
Over four days, patrol officers dedicated to crosswalk activity documented 60 violations and issued 17 citations for failure to yield or stop for pedestrians in crosswalks.
