An Occupant Protection Grant awarded to the Vicksburg Police Department is helping local officers protect citizens from unbelted traffic fatalities, injuries and crashes.

Deputy Chief Johnnie Edwards gave an update at Wednesday’s Board of Mayor and Aldermen meeting on what the VPD has done and will do with the grant meant to get people to wear their seat belts.

The police department had two roadblock details in October where officers issued 93 citations, 39 of which were for seatbelt violations and 10 were child restraint tickets.

“Our goal is to lower those numbers each month,” Edwards said.

Officers, he said, are conducting pre- and post- observations before and after a roadblock detail to record the differences they see in driver behavior.

“We go out and we do a pre-event. Where we don’t do any enforcement, the officer is just sitting there documenting how many cars come by with people unbelted. The next time we go out we’ll do the actual event. Then we’ll go back and do a post- to see how well the event helped these people that were unbelted,” Edwards said.

For the month of October,  he said Vicksburg had two traffic fatalities in an accident downtown near the intersection of Levee and Clay streets when a vehicle and an 18-wheeler crashed. He said both of the people who died were wearing seat belts.

Edwards said the grant requires officers to publicly report on their progress.

“We will come in from time to time and report on these (traffic stops) according to the requirements of this grant,” Edwards said.

Holiday traffic enforcement started Tuesday, and another roadblock detail is scheduled before the end of the month.

“We just encourage everyone to buckle up and be safe,” he said.

The VPD has made a few predictions on what there work will mean for the community.

Edwards said the department projects to reduce the number of unbelted crashes from 24 in 2014 to 23 by the end of 2017, reduce the number of unbelted fatalities from 2 in 2014 to 1 by the end of 2017, and reduced the number of unbelted injuries from 5 in 2014 to 3 by the end of 2017.

“Now although those numbers are projected, our goal is that we have no fatalities nor any crashes where people are unbelted in the vehicles during the crashes,” Edwards said.