Bartow Sheriff's Office Awarded $76K H.E.A.T. Grant

CARTERSVILLE, GA — The Governor's Office of Highway Safety has awarded the Bartow County Sheriff's Office $76,427.39 in grant funding for its Highway Enforcement of Aggressive Traffic, or H.E.A.T., Unit for the 2019 season.

The Unit, which is in its sixth year of operating, works to reduce the number of crashes related to impaired driving and enforce laws targeting aggressive driving around the county. It also works to educate the public about these laws.

Each officer working the H.E.A.T. unit is equipped with materials to educate Georgia residents about state laws that regulate aggressive and impaired driving. Education and enforcement must go hand-in-hand for the Governor's Office of Highway Safety and its statewide partners to be successful in reducing the number of crashes, fatalities and injuries on our highways, BCSO said.

As law enforcement partners in the Operation Zero Tolerance DUI and Click It or Ticket seatbelt campaigns, the Bartow County Sheriff’s Office will also conduct mobilizations throughout the year in coordination with GOHS’s year-round waves of high visibility patrols, multi-jurisdictional road checks and sobriety checkpoints.

Here are some stats shared by BCSO related to the operations of its H.E.A.T. Unit from October 2017 to September of this year:

• D.U.I. Arrests: 119; Contacts: 326
• Speeding Citations: 188; Warnings: 2,392
• Seat Belt Citations: 12; Warnings: 649
• Fugitive Apprehensions: 2
• Drug Charges: 48
• Other Citations and Warrants: 311
• Community Events: 19

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Photo: from left to right are Deputy Philip Abernathy, Deputy Corbett Tomsovic, Sgt. Matt Pifer and Sheriff Clark Millsap. Credit: Bartow County Sheriff's Office