According to a public information release from Sgt. Wayne Delk of the Cobb County Police Department, the department has received a $111,451.68 grant from the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety (GOHS).

These funds will support the department’s involvement in the Highway Enforcement of Aggressive Traffic (HEAT) program for 2022.

According to the GOHS website, HEAT “is a multi-jurisdictional task force specifically-designed to combat aggressive traffic across Georgia.”

GOHS describes the goals of the program as follows:

• H.E.A.T. Goals
  -Reduce the number of impaired driving crashes in Georgia by 10%.
  -Enforce laws targeting aggressive driving around Georgia.
   
• H.E.A.T. is designed to educate the public and enforce laws related to impaired and aggressive driving. Each officer is armed with materials to educate Georgia residents about state laws that regulate aggressive and impaired driving. Education and enforcement must go hand-in-hand for the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety and its statewide partners to be successful in reducing the number of crashes, fatalities and injuries on our highways.

The public information release from the Cobb County Police Department describes the program and how Cobb County will use the funds as follows:

HEAT grants fund specialized traffic enforcement activities in counties throughout the state. The program was designed to assist Georgia jurisdictions with the highest rates of traffic crashes, injuries, and fatalities with grants awarded based on impaired driving and speeding data.

“The Cobb County Police Department continues in our mission to keep the motoring public safe as they travel the roadways in Cobb County. We are thankful and appreciative of the continued support from the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety as we continually work to keep our roadways as safe as possible,” Chief Tim Cox stated following notification of the grant from GOHS.

The grant will help finance a specialized task force to combat impaired driving, speeding, and aggressive driving in Cobb County to improve highway safety. As law enforcement partners in the Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over DUI and Click It or Ticket seatbelt campaigns, Cobb County Police Department will also conduct mobilizations throughout the year in coordination with GOHS’s year-round waves of high visibility patrols, concentrated patrols, and multi-jurisdictional sobriety checkpoints.