In 2015, 13 teens lost their lives due to car crashes in Kansas and 40 percent of those teens were not properly restrained.

  To reduce the amount of teen deaths per year,  through March 11, Overland Park Police joined forces with other law enforcement to ensure that people were obeying proper traffic laws.

  Officers at South patrolled the school parking lot to ensure that students were buckled up, were not speeding, or were not texting while driving when leaving school grounds. Officers issued citations to any individual who refused to obey traffic laws.

 Some students received tickets and citations for refusing to heed essential traffic laws.

 “I got a ticket for $281 for going over the speed limit,” senior Abby Conner said.

  You automatically get a ticket for $85 for simply going five miles over the speed limit.

  “I received a ticket for going five miles over the speed limit with a ticket of $85,” senior Mallory Reynolds said. “It was not too bad of a ticket, but the whole experience really made me more cautious when it comes to watching my speed.”

 Students learned to be more cautious while driving and put away distractions while on the road.

 “Receiving a ticket definitely made me more of a cautious driver because that was a lot to have to pay off and the whole experience was very nerve wracking because I never received a ticket before then,” Conner said.  

 The school police officers joined forces with the local law enforcement and made sure to radar the school parking lot to ensure that students were buckled up as they were leaving the school parking lot.

“The searches were a part of the initiative in the metropolitan area primarily in school zones,” local Overland Park and school officer Richard Spandle said. “We primarily focused on occupational hazards and occupational restraint violations during this period.”

This initiation was set in place by the Overland Park police force spreading the movement across the state of Kansas.

“Since South is located in Overland Park, the local police department assigned an officer to South specifically in order to catch any violators,” Spandle said.

In years past the city of Overland Park would send over four or five officers during one specific morning rush to observe and ticket any students or adults that fail to obey the basic driving laws.

“This year the initiation changed and one officer was sent to monitor over a certain period of time,” Spandle said. “It was more effective to have many officers on scene in order to spot those failing to proper certain restraint laws and to send out a responder to fee those refusing to obey to increase awareness of how import it is to follow even the most basic traffic laws.”

Those who refuse to follow basic driving laws are fined.

“Those under the age of 18 are fined $60 and those over 18 years old are fined $10,” Spandle said. “In past years, we had to write around 15 fees for violating traffic laws.”