LEWISTON — Speed, text or fiddle with that podcast at your own risk.

Lewiston police wrote more than twice as many traffic tickets in 2018 than in 2017, and pulled over thousands more drivers.

In 2018, police stopped 9,768 motorists and wrote 1,633 citations, up from 755 citations in 2017, according to year-end numbers in the Lewiston City Administrator’s Report.

In 2017, it was 7,185 vehicles.

Year over year, stops were up nearly 36 percent and citations 116 percent.

The biggest reason for the jumps?

“We had a heck of a lot more federal grant money given to us,” said Lt. David St. Pierre.

Funds from the Maine Bureau of Highway Safety paid for dedicated overtime to patrol for distracted driving, operating under the influence, speeding, seat belt enforcement and pedestrian safety, he said.

In 2018, the department received $59,688.12, up from $20,957.93 in 2017, according to bureau Director Lauren Stewart.

Dedicated patrols are typically performed in four-hour blocks, St. Pierre said. The bureau frequently specifies the time of year and times of day, for instance, around holidays.

“We don’t dictate whether it’s a verbal warning, a written warning, a citation,” he said.

Officers do not have a ticket-writing quota, he said, and fines on the citations do not stay with the department.

A spokeswoman for the Administrative Office of the Courts said all but 6 percent of that money goes into the state’s general fund. The rest sits in a fund for municipalities and counties statewide to request money to reimburse law enforcement services.

Stops are not intended to uncover larger issues, but that can happen, St. Pierre said.

“Our goal for traffic enforcement is to reduce speed complaints, reduce people getting injured and struck,” St. Pierre said. “If I get hired for one of these details, I’m driving around looking for people texting; I’m not going to a harassment call or an accident.

“Certainly, anecdotally, we might find something we didn’t find out before. We stop a speeder and find out he’s suspended. With any increased police activity, there’s a good chance of finding other stuff.”

The department has not gotten word on 2019 funding yet, he said.

In Auburn, Deputy Police Chief Tim Cougle said stops were down year over year — 7,079 in 2017 and 6,494 in 2018 — largely due to short staffing.

In 2018, Auburn received $82,703.75 from the Maine Bureau of Highway Safety, up slightly from $81,713.63 in 2017.

“We had a two-man traffic unit, that’s what they did, they handled traffic concerns, (but) we haven’t been able to fully staff that in over a year,” Cougle said.

“We’re hiring people, we have officers in the academy now. We will restaff that once we are fully staffed, but that will take some time.”

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