Antioch Police Department Brings Back Traffic Unit

The Antioch Police Department announced it has brought back its traffic unit after a year-long hiatus due to staffing levels.

According to Chief Brian Addington, Sgt. Rob Green will be the solo officer on patrol, but he hopes to grow the department to 1 sergeant with 4 officers within a 2-year period. He anticipates a second officer will join the traffic unit in a few months.

“It’s one person right now which is better than no people,” stated Addington. “I’ve gone to different community groups and watched social media and traffic is clearly one of the top concerns that I hear and see. Due to staffing issues, no one was able to be assigned to traffic.”

Addington says it’s been over a year since they have had a traffic unit patrolling the City of Antioch and it was time to bring it back because it was a much needed specialty within the city—plus residents have been asking for it.

“When you don’t have staffing, everything kind of collapses to the core of what a police department is which is people calling in with emergencies and responding to calls is the top priority,” explained Addington. “When you don’t have that, you collapse some of the specialty units out of necessity to respond to calls.”

The traffic unit will have a goal of providing traffic calming measures, be a visible deterrence and write tickets for traffic violations—including speeding and red light runners. They also hope to reduce the number of fatal crashes and traffic accidents.

Photo APD: Sgt. Rob Green

Addington also says the traffic unit will help reduce potential sideshows as they can now invest time to be more proactive in knowing about them ahead of time and while they are still being organized so they can respond appropriately with other agencies if needed.  The goal is to stop them before they happen or reach City of Antioch limits.

“In the last 3-weeks, we have done a good job with sideshows and have been able to get officers to the scene and break them up quickly,” said Addington.

He called the traffic unit a community focus because they have been asking for it and it highlights the police department is listening and they hear the community.

“This is huge for the city of Antioch because the community sets expectations for Antioch police and clearly increased traffic enforcement is what I am hearing from the community so we are able to dedicate one resource to help with that. I think since I’ve been here there has been 4 fatal collisions,” shared Addington.

Back in 2015, the Antioch Police Department, former Antioch Police Chief Allan Cantando brought back its traffic unit after a two-year hiatus due to staffing–similar to today, that unit began with 1 officer and grew. By 2019, former Chief Tammany Brooks filled the traffic division with 4 officers

In the past, the Antioch Police Department provided crime data, within that data included traffic:

Injury Crashes

• 2013 – 349
• 2014 – 351
• 2015 – 418
• 2016 – 385
• 2017 – 330
• 2018 – 362
• 2019 – 316
• 2020 – 266
• 2021 – 288

Fatal Collisions

• 2013 – 5
• 2014 – 3
• 2015 – 8
• 2016 – 7
• 2017 – 2
• 2018 – 8
• 2019 – 6
• 2020 – 5
• 2021 – 3