Park City Police were on traffic patrol last week making 14 traffic stops on Friday and Saturday along Deer Valley Drive. On Friday, a vehicle break-in occurred at the MARC as well.
Park City Police Department Phil Kirk says the Chevy impala driver’s side window was smashed between about 8:30 am and 1:30 pm on Friday. A purse and a backpack were taken. The car was parked in the lot outside of the Park City Municipal Athletic and Recreation Center on Little Kate Road.
“Vehicle burglars can time things such as somebody’s at a trail head and going running. In this case that recreation or gym type of facility. They know that they're going to be in there and their going to be there for a while and then have the ability to commit the crime without being detected much more easily. So, the best thing to do is to not have anything in plain view. Just you know the other potential problem there is that they steal your car and if it's unlocked and maybe that makes it a little easier to do that.”
Traffic enforcement wrote up more than a dozen warnings for drivers speeding. Kirk says they focused on multiple locations along Deer Valley Drive.
“We’ve been focusing on the Mine Road, Marsac Avenue and Hillside. You know that stretch of road that goes between Marsac and Main Street and those three areas our traffic unit, because we've had a number of requests, had been focusing on traffic enforcement.”
Kirk says it is left up to the officer’s discretion whether to give out speeding tickets or just warnings.
“So, they have that latitude using good judgement to determine whether they’re going to issue a citation or give a verbal warning. Certainly, repeat violators or violators that are excessive they will receive actual citations.”
Kirk says the department will respond to public traffic complaints from neighborhoods.
“We’ve had a unit, a squad of traffic officers headed up by Sargents and so the complaints normally are funneled into the traffic Sargent then he assigns different officers different times of the day that our traffic officers primarily focus on traffic enforcement.”
Truck safety inspections have also been underway in Park City recently. KPCW reported on a run-away truck last September that lost its brakes in Ontario Canyon and careened through the Marsac Avenue neighborhood. The truck driver had lost his brakes and had to ditch the vehicle in the Deer Valley round-about.
“Those kinds of issues, we went through the effort and expense of getting one of our officers certified through the National Highway Safety Traffic Administration to be certified in the inspection of trucks and we provided the equipment including the scales. Officer Powers has been doing that for the last couple of years.”
Kirk was unable to comment on a Vail billboard on Park Avenue that was defaced over the weekend. The vandals wrote derogatory comments along with misspelling the word community. The reference is over the resort closing on April 7th. The billboard advertising Vail’s Epic Pass was scrubbed clean by the end of the day on Monday.
The Ski Patrol reported to police that a couch had been set on fire in the First-Time parking lot area at the base of Park City Mountain.