Estevan's STEP traffic blitz begins today, with officers from multiple agencies keeping an eye on the streets.

Murray Cowan, the Deputy Chief for the Estevan Police Service, explains the event.

“The traffic blitz is referred to as STEP so it's the Selective Traffic Enforcement Program. It's hosted primarily by SGI, they're the ones that organize the program and they move it around the province. Beginning tomorrow, for the next couple of days, it's going to be here in Estevan and in the surrounding area, in and around the city. “ 

“The program involves a number of different agencies from around the province, all kinds of enforcement agencies, municipal services and RCMP members, including Highway Traffic members as well as you know conservation officers and our CN police and CP police and those types of agencies will be in the city and it's primarily a task force that's dedicated to improving Traffic Safety in and around the province of Saskatchewan.” 

They'll be keeping an eye on numerous safety measures, which will include inspections in some cases.

“Starting tomorrow there will be a number of agencies set up, the task force set up, and the team set up. In and around the city, we'll have spotters and flag persons and people like that around the city doing this work and watching for traffic violations," said Cowan, "So they'll continue with what we've always done.“ 

“We'll focus on things like distracted driving, speeding, seat belt use, licensing, unlicensed drivers. We're also going to have folks focused on traffic and vehicle inspections, including inspections of commercial vehicles. Looking for safety violations and those kinds of things, so it's a big event.“

Estevan has experience with this kind of event, so Cowan believes it should go smoothly in the community.

"Estevan has hosted it before. I believe it was about four years ago when we did the last one and it's back in our city here for the next couple of days. It's not a secret that we're out and about, we want people to know and just to drive safely as they should at any other given time.”