Release:

(Valdosta, Ga) The Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office is pleased to announce it has received a $52,063.60 High Visibility Enforcement (HVE) grant from the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety (GOHS).  Funding for this grant is provided by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and is awarded based upon the partnership with The Governor’s Office of Highway Safety in helping to reduce crashes, injuries, and fatalities across the State of Georgia.

High Visibility Enforcement combines highly visible and proactive law enforcement to target a specific traffic safety issue designed to change unlawful and dangerous driving behaviors that contribute to most of the fatal and serious-injury traffic crashes on our roads.  Law enforcement efforts are combined with visibility elements and public notification on the enforcement campaign to educate the public on traffic safety and promote voluntary compliance with the law.

“With the increase in the number of persons killed in traffic crashes in Georgia and across the nation over the last year, the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety is working with partners like the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office to implement programs designed to stop the risky driving behaviors that are contributing to a majority of our serious-injury and fatality crashes,” Allen Poole, Director of the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety said.”  “Many of the fatal traffic crashes on our roads are preventable, and we will continue to work with our educational and enforcement partners to develop programs and initiatives that are designed to get Georgia to our goal of zero traffic deaths.”

“I extremely thankful for the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety and Gov. Kemp for awarding us this High Visibility Enforcement grant. This grant gives us additional speed detection equipment and will keep deputies on the roads longer in an effort to reduce speeds on our highways. This year saw an increase in traffic fatalities, and I hope this will assist us in our goal of reducing those numbers” said Sheriff Ashley Paulk.

As law enforcement partners in the Operation Zero Tolerance DUI and Click It Or Ticket seatbelt campaigns, the Lowndes 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 sobriety checkpoints.

The grant will continue through September of 2022.