THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Sunday, September 11, 1994             TAG: 9409090035
SECTION: COMMENTARY               PAGE: J4   EDITION: FINAL 
TYPE: Editorial 
                                             LENGTH: Medium:   54 lines

STATE POLICE AS CRIME FIGHTERS THEIR BEST USE

With 900 of the best-trained officers in the state, the Virginia State Police has turned increasingly from writing speeding tickets to making criminal arrests. That's smart.

Statistics indicate that most drivers are taking safe driving seriously, traveling within safe speeds and without impairment by alcohol and drugs. Traffic fatalities have declined steadily in recent years - down about 10 percent this year, to 570 as of Aug. 18, from 576 the same date last year.

It makes little sense, then, for simple traffic enforcement to claim overwhelming chunks of state police officers' time. It makes less sense for the officers to be so preoccupied writing traffic citations that gun and drug runners and fugitives go undetected.

This is not to say that speeding motorists can expect consistently trouble-free rides. By mid-August, State Police had issued 114,425 speeding tickets, so the revolving blue lights still are hardly a rarity.

It gets down to the best use of resources. Few motorists haven't wondered, as they passed a State Police vehicle parked on the side of a long stretch of straight, traffic-free, highway, whether posting a state trooper in a vehicle to wait for someone to reach excessive speed was a good use of their tax dollars.

The answer is simple: No. Operation Alert, a State Police program in its second year, recognizes that nabbing real criminals, not someone whose foot gets a little heavy on the gas pedal, is the best use of troopers. It recognizes that criminals also are mobile, and it proves that highway stops can catch them.

A spring incident near Richmond illustrates how that could happen:

A trooper, suspicious that a slow-moving pickup truck was operated by a drunken driver, stopped the vehicle and determined that there was no impairment. That could have ended the stop, but the trooper asked additional questions. He found $412,000 in a concealed drawer and filed several drug-related charges.

Operation Alert correctly emphasizes asking questions and looking around rather than simply determining if there is a traffic violation. By mid-August, criminal arrests from traffic stops had soared to 6,944 - from 7,450 in 1992, the first year of Operation Alert.

Col. M. Wayne Huggins, superintendent of the Virginia State Police, said his department remains committed to traffic safety but is determined also to deal with the ``tremendous numbers'' of roadway crimes. That mixture should comfort law-abiding travelers and Virginia taxpayers and give fair warning to scofflaws. by CNB