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Stealthy trap lurks in traffic

By SHANNON COLAVECCHIO-VAN SICKLER
Published May 16, 2005

TAMPA - Matt Beck settles into the big white pickup with tinted windows, starts the engine and turns onto N Dale Mabry Highway just south of Waters Avenue.

Dressed in jeans, a blue T-shirt and scruffy sneakers, Beck and the popular-model pickup blend in easily with morning commuters on the busy thoroughfare.

But Beck is a Hillsborough County sheriff's deputy, and his mission on this Tuesday morning is to see everything - yet go unseen.

He is out to spot aggressive drivers who weave, tailgate, speed and run red lights.

At 7:37 a.m., a silver Nissan Maxima flies past Beck at 63 mph. The speed limit is 45 mph.

Beck gets on his radio to tell deputies in marked patrol units about the speeder. A corporal quickly pulls over the Nissan. A few minutes later, he calls Beck over the radio.

"For the record," Cpl. Donald Morris says, "this guy said he never even knew you were there."

The stealth truck is the latest weapon in Sheriff David Gee's push to make area roads - ranked among the nation's deadliest - safer.

Gee, whose teenage son was seriously injured in a crash two years ago, has made the reduction of traffic-related crashes and deaths a priority for his first six months in office.

Already this year, 31 people - including pedestrians, motorcyclists and bicyclists - died in traffic crashes that occurred throughout unincorporated Hillsborough. Another 53 people died in crashes investigated by the Florida Highway Patrol and the Tampa, Plant City and Temple Terrace police departments.

In Pinellas County, where sheriff's deputies use decoy vehicles like Beck's white pickup, 35 people died between Jan. 1 and May 2. Last year during the same period, four dozen died.

"We're growing faster than any place in the world, it seems, and all those people moving here use the same roads," said Florida Highway Patrol spokesman Trooper Larry Coggins. "But people need to have patience. This is life in the big city. We're all stuck in the same traffic jam."

Authorities know most drivers behave when they see a patrol car nearby. With the decoy vehicles, unsuspecting motorists don't know to suddenly slow down or to stop changing lanes like they're driving in a real-life video game.

"People see the blue and white, and all of a sudden everybody gets cautious," said Tampa police spokesman Joe Durkin. "Using a cool car is a way to mingle in with traffic and see how people really drive."

The FHP in December debuted two decoy cars, dubbed Marauders, to patrol Tampa Bay highways - interstates 4, 75 and 275. Last month the FHP added another of the sporty Mercury sedans because the first two have been so successful.

"Our marauder troopers are daily catching people doing the most bizarre things," said Coggins.

In the first quarter of this year, the two Marauders issued citations for more than 600 careless and reckless driving violations, Coggins said.

On the morning Beck went out, drivers went well above the speed limit and didn't use turn signals as they weaved in and out of lanes. They cut fellow motorists off and got up on other cars' tails.

Authorities say that kind of driving contributes to the dangerous state of bay area roads.

In 2004, 185 people died in crashes in Hillsborough. In Pinellas, 113 people died.

In the first two months of this year, the Hillsborough Sheriff's Office investigated 761 crashes with injuries - 6 percent more than in the first two months of 2004. The agency also arrested 594 people for drunken driving during the same period - 11 percent more than in 2004.

Hillsborough County leads the state in the number of alcohol-related fatalities and traffic crashes, with 1,012 crashes last year in the unincorporated and incorporated areas.

The decoy vehicles are a way to catch this reckless behavior. Gee hopes residents will come to realize that they never know when a deputy is watching from inside a Toyota or unassuming SUV.

Meanwhile, deputies are focusing on roadways near schools. Gee said in one recent afternoon, they ticketed 56 drivers coming in and out of the area near Durant High School in southern Hillsborough.

The Hillsborough Sheriff's Office is working with other agencies like Tampa police and the Florida Highway Patrol to catch intoxicated drivers with late-night and early-morning operations on major thoroughfares.

And they are emphasizing pedestrian and bicyclist safety, a move that comes after a national study last year found that pedestrians in Tampa Bay are in greater danger than in any other U.S. metro area except Orlando.

The Sheriff's Office has applied for a grant that would pay for 8,000 bicycle helmets and for community workshops on bicycle and pedestrian safety. Statistics show that 95 percent of the bicyclists who died in Hillsborough within the past three years weren't wearing helmets. Among pedestrians who died, half were found to have been at fault, according to the Sheriff's Office.

St. Petersburg police do not use decoy vehicles. But in Pinellas County, the Sheriff's Office has since 2001 used two decoys to target aggressive drivers in known problem areas.

It's 8:10 a.m.

Beck has been at this for an hour, and the aggressive drivers just keep coming.

Deputies pull over a four-door silver Buick after the driver cuts back and forth across the northbound lanes of traffic, speeding as he tailgates. A Harley-Davidson motorcycle driver gets stopped for reckless driving, then gets hauled off to jail because he doesn't have the proper license to be riding the motorcycle.

Another driver in a red Honda Civic is nabbed for driving more than 60 mph, whooshing by Beck's pickup as he weaves around slower cars without using his turn signal to change lanes.

The driver slows down only to pull into the Saturn dealership where he works. Beck pulls up next to the Civic just as the man is getting out of the car. Cpl. Morris, wrapping up another citation nearby, is on his way to issue this one.

The driver says he drove fast because he was late for work.

"I just can't afford to get points on my license," he says, shaking his head.

Beck gets back into the pickup and turns onto N Dale Mabry.

Here comes a green Nissan going 70 mph.

Beck gets on the radio to tell Morris: We've got another one.

--Times staff writer Alex Leary contributed to this report.

[Last modified May 16, 2005, 01:12:02]