Seattle Police Department press release:

The Seattle Police Department (SPD) has partnered up with the Washington State Patrol (WSP) and the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) to create a Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Squad (CVES). The CVES mission is to improve public safety within the Seattle region by reducing the number of unsafe commercial motor vehicles operating on our roadways through a process of education and enforcement.

The SPD squad is made up of four officers from the Traffic Section who completed a three week long commercial vehicle enforcement training course at the WSP Academy. The four CVES officers will devote their time to enforcing commercial vehicle safety regulations and will also be part of a multi-agency commercial vehicle enforcement task force.

This project was completed in partnership with SDOT and the WSP who provided laptops, weight scales, a CVES enforcement vehicle as well as individual tools and equipment for the officers.

The Port of Seattle, Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway (BNSF) and Union Pacific Railway (UP) are also participating in this effort and have contributed additional training, support and facilities.

Over 40,000 commercial vehicles travel on the roadways through Seattle every day. A number of these trucks are operating with safety violations egregious enough to place them “out of service” under federal motor carrier safety guidelines.

After studying collision data in the Seattle metropolitan area, it was discovered that the majority of serious collisions (fatality, serious injury and serious property damage) involved commercial vehicles hauling containers to and from Port of Seattle facilities.

To answer this trend city, county, state and federal agencies have organized a task force to conduct commercial vehicle emphasis patrols. The goal of this enforcement effort is to improve safety by reducing the number of equipment violations and unsafe trucks operating throughout the Seattle region.

Task force emphasis patrols will occur over the next year in areas to be determined by task force agreement.