Omaha Police tracking excessive speeding across the metro

OMAHA, Neb. (WOWT) - Excessive speeding is not a new problem in the metro, but Omaha Police are doing what they can to try to combat the issue.

Sunday night, the OPD traffic unit was monitoring speeders on West Dodge Road — specifically between Interstate 680 and 156th Street.

“They, you know, stopped several people traveling in excess of 100 miles per hour in a 55 zone,” OPD Sgt. Adam Turnbull said.

In just a matter of hours, five people were ticketed for going twice the speed limit on that stretch of road.

Sgt. Turnbull says it’s not entirely surprising, either.

“It’s not, I guess, uncommon.”

But the behavior plays a part in a disturbing trend.

Turnbull said nearly a third of the fatal crashes they respond to are speed-related.

“Obviously time is valuable to everyone but when we’re talking about someone going double the posted speed limit, we’re not talking about someone in a hurry, we’re talking about someone engaging in reckless, careless behavior, and that’s what we’re trying to reduce.”

When it comes to knowing where to do their speeding enforcement, Turnbull says often the police department relies on complaints from the community coming into the mayor’s hotline, or other avenues.

And when it comes to knowing where to do speeding enforcement, often the police rely on community members.

“A lot of times citizens will bring something up to their city councilmember that represents them, and they let us know and our selective enforcement sergeants keep a spreadsheet and then we assign out those speeding complaints to the officers we have available.”

There are many areas of town they commonly get complaints about, including Dodge street from 72nd Street, up until the end of the 55-mile-per-hour zone ends at 156th Street.

“Thirteenth Street, between downtown and the zoo area. Pacific Street, we’ve received several complaints about between 90th and 680, 72nd Street around Ames, up to 680,” Turnbull says, to name a few.

The objective isn’t to target parts of town, but rather, the behavior.

“If someone’s speeding on 72nd, it’s probably the same person that speeds on Pacific Street, probably the same person that speeds on Dodge.”

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