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Troopers busy during crackdown It was a busy week last week as Alabama State Troopers mounted a blitz, writing over 26,000 traffic citations and making other arrests and stops in an effort to reduce highway deaths and to increase safety. Locally, the Clarke County Circuit Clerk's office, where the traffic arrests are filed, estimated that as many as 300 tickets were turned in. Normally only a handful are recorded in a week's time. The stretch of U.S. Highway 43 from Grove Hill to Jackson was especially fruitful since the speed limit there is reduced to 55 miles per hour. Local troopers patrolled it heavily and a lot of tickets were written. The week-long event was termed "Take Back Our Highways," and was deemed a success with rural traffic fatalities dropping 69 percent and troopers issuing 340 percent more traffic citations than during the same period in 2006. Col. J. Christopher Murphy, director of the Alabama Department of Public Safety, called the campaign an unqualified success and vowed to continue the agency's strategic intensive patrol and enforcement efforts. "Alabama's highways are safer today because of our state troopers and their exemplary work to save lives and increase traffic safety," he said.
"Take Back Our Highways" placed approximately 200 additional troopers - from all divisions and all ranks - in uniform and on patrol duty Aug. 13-17 to combat Alabama's increasing traffic fatalities. Murphy said state traffic deaths climbed more than five percent in 2006 - to their highest level since 1973 - at the same time that traffic deaths nationwide fell two percent.
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