Tuesday, Jan. 10 2012 6:50PM
Operation Decoy: Police deploy mannequin to improve traffic safety
By Rob Roberts, rroberts@lsjournal.com
Rob Roberts, the Journal
Some residents have gotten into a huff after learning that Huff, the newest member of the Lee’s Summit Police Department’s traffic unit, is a decoy. But sources with the department say the ends of Operation Decoy, improved traffic safety, justifies the means.
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closeOne of the Lee’s Summit Police Department’s most effective new tools for reducing speeding and accidents is a new member of the force who has yet to write one ticket.
Huff, as the name badge on her uniform reads, can’t write tickets because she is “a decoy,” said Rod Schaeffer, the sergeant over Lee’s Summit’s traffic safety special operations unit.
She doesn’t technically qualify for “dummy” status, Schaeffer added, explaining that the decoy consists of nothing more than a mannequin’s head with cap and shades nestled on top of a police uniform filled with stuffing. But on the four occasions when Huff has been deployed around the city since last fall, she has consistently managed to slow traffic.
“You see a lot of brake lights,” Chief of Police Joe Piccinini said. “And it doesn’t cost us anything.”
Piccinini frequently challenges his officers and their commanders to think outside the box – “innovative thinking,” he calls it. And Schaeffer responded by suggesting the department use decoy traffic officers – a practice he has witnessed while conducting law-enforcement training in other jurisdictions.
“I do training throughout the United States, so I knew the idea of using decoys has been around for years. They do it a lot in West Palm Beach, Fla., for instance,” Schaeffer said. “The goal is to optimize patrol resources, slow down the motoring public, reduce crashes and promote overall safety.”
Of course, some of the few drivers who have noticed that Huff is a decoy have gotten into a huff about the operation, he said.
One complaint came from a resident who questioned whether a dummy traffic cop was a wise allocation of departmental resources. It is, Schaefer responded, given that the patrol car Huff occupies is a stripped-down training vehicle and that Huff works for nothing. The cost of manning an operating patrol car with a live officer would be about $200 to $300 for a four-hour shift.
That’s about how long Huff works per location, Schaeffer said.
“What we like to do is put the decoy out for a day – and not for days or even hours on end,” he said. “Then the next day, we put a real officer out there.”
The fact that ticket totals are generally lower in places where Huff has been the day before indicate that the decoy’s use is effective, at least in the short-term, Schaeffer added.
Huff is intended for use at frequent accident sites, like interchanges along U.S. 50, and areas where the department has had a lot of speeding complaints, like the stretch of Pryor Road between Interstate 470 and Colbern Road. In the latter location, a homeowner concerned with speeders recently offered the use of his driveway for Huff’s squad car.
“It has to be safely out of the roadway so that it doesn’t impede the flow of traffic,” Schaeffer said. “We don’t want to cause a problem by putting it out there.”
In addition, he said, officers try not to locate the decoy in areas where a resident might be inclined to run to Huff for help. That helps ward off another type of complaint that the department has anticipated.
“People don’t think police should be using any type of trickery,” explained Sgt. Chris Depue, the department’s public information officer. “But our ultimate goal is to slow people down and prevent fatal crashes. And everyone knows that when you see a police car, you automatically slow down, even if you’re not speeding.”
The great thing about Huff, added traffic officer Sgt. Cary Colyne, is that she achieves compliance with speed limits without any negative financial impact to motorists. “You don’t get a ticket from a mannequin in a car,” Colyne explained.
According to Piccinini, his department has used several means to improve local traffic safety, including the more traditional use of radar guns and trailers that show motorists how fast they are traveling. Piccinini was sold on the idea of decoys, he added, after hearing about an operation in Peoria, Ill., where a decoy has been used to stop drug trafficking.
In 2006, Peoria police began brainstorming ways to shut down a drug house and came up with the idea of parking a retired police car in front of the residence. The next day, police discovered that the car’s tires had been slashed and its windows had been smashed.
But Peoria police officials didn’t declare the operation a failure and discontinue it, Piccinini said.
Instead, they kept thinking outside the box and decided to replace the patrol car with an armored car outfitted with five infrared surveillance cameras, a padlocked hood, a locked gas cap and protective screens over its headlights and tail lights. Soon, the dealers moved out, Piccinini said, “because no one wanted to buy drugs with an armored vehicle equipped with cameras sitting out front.”
That’s not to say the Lee’s Summit department is preparing to replicate Peoria’s Operation Armadillo here.
But local residents should beware. According to Schaeffer, Operation Decoy will be returning soon “to a location near you.”
