New MHP team patrols valley

Speeders and drunk drivers beware.

A mobile team of Montana Highway Patrol troopers is conducting intensive traffic patrols around the Flathead Valley until Tuesday.

"They're here to keep people safe and focus on those violations that cause accidents," said Highway Patrol Sgt. Steve Levin, whose Kalispell-based unit is currently being assisted by the new team.

Founded in January, the patrol's Aggressive Driver Apprehension Team will operate across the state in areas statistically identified as high-crash corridors.

Kalispell is the team's first real deployment.

"It's kind of one of those things where, despite all the road improvements, the crashes keep going up and the deaths keep going up," said Highway Patrol Sgt. Pete Richardson, who commands the new team. "I don't have any doubt that it will succeed … The safety factor has to be enhanced."

In Flathead County, which had 25 fatal crashes in 2007, the team is targeting stretches of road on U.S. 2 East, U.S. 93 South, U.S. 93 North.

And the team, which was created with money from a Montana Department of Transportation grant, is not hindered by responsibility for a host district's normal call load, said Richardson.

"We work strictly traffic enforcement, intensive traffic enforcement," he said.

The team, made up of Richardson and five other troopers, will deploy in eight-day stretches 26 times a year.

Half of those deployments will be in the western half of the state. Seven will be in the Flathead Valley.

"Those two districts, that's where the activity is," said Richardson, referring to Kalispell and Missoula.

Richardson said in 2008 he expects his team to hand out 1,500 to 1,700 traffic tickets, arrest about 75 people driving on suspended licenses, and take 50 drunk drivers off the roads.

Troopers also will be looking for speeders, drivers passing an emergency vehicle or stopped squad car in the right lane of a two-lane highway, and vehicles with their windows tinted darker than 24 percent light transmission.

A similar unit, nicknamed the "goon squad," disbanded about 10 years ago, said Richardson.

"We'll get around the state and try not to stay in any one place too long," he said. "We want to maintain a certain amount of deployment everywhere. We'll also split it up so people will never be confident where they will see the squad."

The team's next target: Billings.

Reporter Nicholas Ledden can be reached at 758-4441 or by e-mail at nledden@dailyinterlake.com