March is traffic safety month in the City of Santa Clarita. As part of the continuing education and enforcement efforts by the City and the Sheriffs Department to help promote traffic safety, provide traffic enforcement and fund state-of-the-art technology to improve traffic flow, the two entities also fund a special, targeted education/enforcement program called the Sheriff's Teen Traffic Offender Program or STTOP.

The STTOP program is an innovative intervention program aimed at helping to better educate young drivers and their parents. It is reckless behavior and other bad driving practices that STTOP hopes to correct. The program is designed to intervene when a young driver displays poor judgment or dangerous driving behavior. Aside from following up on collision reports and citations issued, STTOP encourages all citizens to call in and report dangerous teen drivers. Too many times, patrol officers are not present to see the dangerous driving. The inability to catch the offender in the act ties the hands of law enforcement, which cannot act on a Vehicle Code infraction they do not witness. Often the youthful driver screeches his tires, races another car or does other dangerous maneuvers, and then vanishes before the patrol units can arrive.

STTOP will take the information phoned in or on-line about the driver, his vehicle and the dangerous driving behavior and attempt to identify the offender. After locating the driver, a Sheriff's Deputy conducts an intervention with the driver and his/her parents. The programs' intent is not to prosecute, but to correct and educate the offender and his parents. Getting parents involved is the key.

The parents can't always be there and peer pressure, or simply wanting to impress friends, often leads to deadly consequences. The goal of STTOP is to make teens better, safer drivers, which in turn benefits all drivers on the roadways. Unlike some private organizations, there are no additional fees charged to parents of teens, to put a bumper sticker with a "toll free number" on a car (which can be easily removed). No additional taxes are levied on citizens. A postcard or letter isn't sent with a one-size-fits-all message, which can be easily lost in the mail, or thrown away by the teen. As part of STTOP, an experienced, uniformed law enforcement officer from the community actually visits the home, unannounced, to talk to the parents and the teen. The impact this has is unrivaled!

TSince the start of the City and the Sheriffs’ department’s STTOP (Sheriffs Teen Traffic Offender Program) in April, 2004, hundreds of complaints have been registered by people observing reckless driving in Santa Clarita. The success of the program has prompted Sheriffs’ and City officials to continue and expand the program each year.

The STTOP program relies on the support of the community, requiring drivers who observe reckless driving to call a toll-free number and report the poor driving, including providing a license plate number. This program, together with the education and additional traffic enforcement implemented, is going a long way towards reducing traffic incidents in our community. To report dangerous teen driving, call the STTOP hotline at 1-877-310-STOP or Click Here to report on-line.

Best regards,

Captain Anthony La Berge
Chief of Police for the City of Santa Clarita