Speeders can
’t see Joe Kingman soaring 1,500 feet above southbound U.S. 101,
but the California Highway Patrol officer and pilot can see them.
“I’ve got a champagne sedan a half-mile out at 82 (mph),” Kingman
broadcast to two CHP patrol cars waiting on the side of the
Cochrane Road on-ramp one recent W
ednesday morning. “He’s in the No. 1 lane. You can start down
the ramp.”
Speeders can’t see Joe Kingman soaring 1,500 feet above southbound U.S. 101, but the California Highway Patrol officer and pilot can see them. “I’ve got a champagne sedan a half-mile out at 82 (mph),” Kingman broadcast to two CHP patrol cars waiting on the side of the Cochrane Road on-ramp one recent Wednesday morning. “He’s in the No. 1 lane. You can start down the ramp.”
Officer Matt Ramirez, first in line, moved from the grassy shoulder onto the ramp, looking over his left shoulder for the sedan.
“He’s on your bumper,” was the broadcast from Kingman as the sedan in question sped past the on-ramp and Ramirez flipped on the patrol car’s lights and sirens. “You’re door-to-door.”
Ramirez moved left into the fast lane, now directly behind the Nissan Sentra, to pull the car over to the right-hand shoulder.
It was the third of 13 tickets five officers, plus Kingman overhead, would issue to speeders in 45 minutes during the morning commute.
Over an eight-hour period that day, the six CHP officers on the specil detail handed out 91 speeding tickets. Thirty-one of the tickets were during the two hours Kingman and his airplane were on duty between Morgan Hill and Gilroy.
One driver was ticketed for driving 91mph.
The local CHP is using Kingman and his Cessna Stationair Turbo 206 more frequently during “maximum enforcement” to catch drivers who speed, drive drunk and otherwise violate the rules of the road.
The maximum enforcement will be initiated as often as there is manpower available, said Officer Brad Voyles.
The reason for the crackdown? Drivers are simply going too fast, Voyles said.
The previous week, on another stretch of 101, Kingman said he caught 15 cars in less than an hour, each going between 83 and 94 mph.
“A lot of times, the officers that are issuing the tickets never even see the speed violation,” said Kingman, a 15-year veteran of the CHP.
Issuing speeding tickets by air, is easier, more efficient and safer for ground units, he said.
“And I go to court less, especially considering the number of tickets I issue,” Kingman said. “If you stop someone at 80 or 90 (mph) – they know.”
That’s not to say the CHP won’t ticket drivers going slower than that, and above the 65 mph limit. But when Kingman took to the air just after 7am, the slowest speeder he ticketed was traveling at 81 mph.
The driver of the Nissan Sentra stopped by Officer Ramirez told him she didn’t know what her speed was when Kingman paced her at 82 mph. She was talking to her passenger and simply wasn’t paying attention – one of the more common speeding excuses Ramirez said he hears.
Kingman caught that speeder by pacing her in the air. He flew directly above her, matching her speed with his plane that travels between 50 and 150 mph. He stayed with her as she passed a marker on the side of the highway, painted by Caltrans for this purpose. One mile down the road was a second marker line, giving Kingman a second method with which to calculate their speed.
After Ramirez finished writing the woman’s ticket – Kingman is recorded as the issuing officer – he exited the highway at San Martin Avenue to drive back north to Cochrane, where other officers waited for Kingman to identify speeders. Some drivers noticed the small cluster of CHP cars that gathered at one point and visibly slowed down.
“There’s not that many of us (officers) to work such a large area,” Ramirez said, referencing a recently released report by the Legislative Analyst’s Office that says officers are spending more time working fender-benders and crashes and less time enforcing speed and other laws. “The mentality is, people think they’re not going to get caught, so we want to be highly visible.”
The officers were highly visible that day, at some points pulling over two or three cars within sight of one another.
