Buffalo Grove Police Department gets federal grant to help ‘step up our road safety efforts’

The Buffalo Grove Police Department announced it hasbeen awarded a $50,000 Sustained Traffic Enforcement Program grant for additional traffic safety enforcement efforts for the 2024 federal fiscal year.

Officials explained in a news release announcing the grant that the “STEP program focuses on high-visibility enforcement and strategies aimed at saving lives and preventing injuries by reducing traffic crashes.”

The total amount of grant the department received is $50,531, according to the release.

“We’re pleased to receive this grant to step up our road safety efforts with the goal of saving lives,” Sergeant Tony Turano stated in the release“Our mission is to make travel safer through directed, proactive patrols and to stop, cite and/or arrest those who choose to violate traffic laws.”

During the STEP grant year, which runs from Oct. 1, 2023 through Sept. 30, 2024, Buffalo Grove police willconduct other traffic enforcement efforts that will be in addition to ones that are required and others the department participates in at specific times and for particular reasons throughout the year, officials explained.

“The additional enforcement efforts focus on the leading contributory causes of crashes: speeding, impaired driving, electronic device use, failure to yield and disobeying traffic control signals, as well as occupant restraint violations,” officials stated in the release.

The STEP grant is funded by federal highway safety funds administered by the Illinois Department of Transportation.