Medford PD performing saturation patrols ahead of holiday weekend

MEDFORD, Ore. —Local police agencies are encouraging safe travels this holiday weekend. They’re doing a joint saturation patrol to make sure people get to their final destination in one piece.

MPD says busy weekends like this are perfect for saturation patrols. It recommends people pre-plan and be patient when driving to their destinations. You might have noticed an extra police presence in Medford on Friday. It’s part of a joint traffic safety saturation patrol.

“Basically what saturation patrol is were putting a lot of officers into a specific area to work on traffic enforcement,” said Sgt. Steve Furst with MPD.

With the holiday season in full swing, MPD wants to remind people to put away the distractions, drive safely, and understand the rules of the road.

It was joined in the effort by the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office and Oregon State Police.

“What we do is focus a couple of times of year on certain areas where we have high traffic travel days and also when we have high incidents of crashes or speed complaints and we can focus our efforts better by having multiple agencies,” said Sgt. Furst.

Friday it covered some of the area’s busiest spots, from HWY 62, HWY 238, and HWY 99 within the city limits of Medford to White City. It also included the Rogue Valley Expressway and Crater Lake Highway. The team focused on speed enforcement, occupant safety, lane usage, impaired driving, and distracted driving.

“Hopefully what we’re really going to accomplish would be for people to drive safely, and understand that they have a responsibility, put your cell phone down and obey the speed limit,” said Sgt. Furst.

Sgt. Furst says the saturation was only for Friday. But MPD is looking at doing DUI prevention saturations in the new year.

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Jenna King is the 6pm and 11pm anchor for NBC5 News. Jenna is a Burbank, CA native. She graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in Broadcast Journalism and a minor in Sports Business. During her time at Oregon she was part of the student-run television station, Duck TV. She also grew her passion for sports through her internship with the PAC 12 Network. When Jenna is not in the newsroom you can find her rooting for her hometown Dodgers, exploring the outdoors or binging on the latest Netflix release.
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