La Mesa Speeding Tickets Nearly Doubled in 2011 from a Year Earlier

Updated at 10:15 p.m. Feb. 28, 2012

Nearly twice as many speeding citations were issued last year in La Mesa than in 2010, according to the La Mesa Police Department.

But the 2011 figure—1,207 citations citywide—fell short of the recent high of 1,475 citations in 2008, police data show.

A recent request by La Mesa Patch for speeding ticket figures also revealed the streets with the most citations.

Police Lt. Matt Nicholass said Lake Murray Boulevard was the top La Mesa location for speeding citations in 2011. Second was Jackson Drive, followed by Baltimore Drive and Spring Street.

Separate figures for these streets weren’t available.

But why did La Mesa officers hand out only 676 citations in 2010 and 526 in 2009?  (Some 1,039 tickets were written in 2007.)

Nicholass said: “There is not a simple answer for the lower number of citations issued in 2009 and 2010.”

He noted that the Police Department’s traffic unit has   one sergeant, two accident investigators, three motor officers and one community service officer.

“Those officers have the primary goal of reducing the number of injury related collisions within the city,” he said.  “At times, the staffing dedicated to enforcement can decrease for various reasons.”

For part of 2010, he said, the Honda-driving traffic unit had a reduced number of officers working enforcement, “which certainly can account for a portion of the decrease in citations.”
 
Other factors included dedicating officers to handle citizen complaints for traffic related matters, he said. 

“These included providing parking enforcement, monitoring complaint locations where there is a lower traffic flow and focusing additional attention on DUI enforcement.”

By contrast, the San Diego Police Department—patrolling a city of 1.3 million— issued 14,944 speeding tickets in 2011, with nearly 1,700 tickets written on College Avenue between El Cajon Boulevard and Montezuma Road near San Diego State University, according to a December 2011 report in U-T San Diego.

However, that means San Diego—with a population nearly 28 times the size of La Mesa—has far fewer tickets per capita.

With 1,207 citations in a city of 57,065 (according to the 2010 U.S. census), La Mesa reported a higher rate of ticketing than the 14,944 tickets for 1.3 million in San Diego. 

Nonresidents are ticketed in both cities, of course, but motorists are nearly twice as likely to be cited for speeding in the 9-square-mile La Mesa than the 342-square-mile San Diego.

Tuesday night, Police Chief Ed Aceves suggested one reason for the higher per-capita citation rate in La Mesa is that San Diego has more unpatrolled roads.

On Monday, 10News reported that the California Highway patrol ticketed 77,000 drivers for speeding in 2011 in San Diego County—with the top spot for citations being a section of Interstate 5 between Harbor Drive at Camp Pendleton and La Costa Avenue in Carlsbad.

The CHP said 3,980 speeders were cited there, according to the news station.

On the speeding hit spots, Nicholass said the entire stretch of Lake Murray Boulevard is a concern for speeding violations. 

“Officers enforce speed the entire stretch of Lake Murray Boulevard,” he said. “All uniformed officers have the responsibility of traffic enforcement.  They are expected to take any enforcement action necessary when they observe violations.”

But officers sometimes ignore minor traffic offenses, he said.

“An example of this would be when an officer was responding to report of a serious crime in progress and witnesses someone driving slightly over the speed limit.  In that situation, the officer would overlook the speeding violation and continue to respond to the serious crime.

“Unfortunately, the public who witnesses the officer overlooking the speeding violation usually is not aware the officer is responding to a report of a more serious crime.”

Speed limits on the busiest stretches vary.

In 2004, the speed limit on Spring Street was changed to 40 mph for the portion south of Lemon Avenue to the city limits, Nicholass said.

Lake Murray Boulevard has a posted 35 mph limit within La Mesa city limits, the same as Jackson Drive from the north city limit to Center Drive. It’s 30 mph on Jackson from Center Drive south to La Mesa Boulevard, and 25 mph from La Mesa Boulevard south to Lemon Avenue.