Amherst County Sheriff’s Office has new unit to prowl U.S. 29

By Chris Dumond

Published: October 29, 2008

AMHERST — If you get close enough to John Grieser to ask him if that thing has a hemi in it, you’re probably going to get hit with a question of your own.

“Sir, do you know how fast you were going?”

Deputy Grieser is half of a traffic unit forming at the Amherst County Sheriff’s Office — and soon to be outfitted with two unmarked 350-plus horsepower Dodge Chargers outfitted with lasers and the latest radar equipment.

And “Oh yeah,” Grieser said, they will indeed have HEMI motors.

The new unit will be on the prowl on the U.S. 29 bypass in southern Amherst County, working to combat reckless driving speeding tickets are on the 12-mile stretch of highway.

A glance through the traffic docket in the county’s general district court on any given week regularly shows reckless-driving citations for 90 mph or more in the 65 mph speed limit zones on the U.S. 29 bypass.

Grieser once wrote a ticket for 113 mph.

“The engineering on the bypass, it was so well designed, the judges call it the autobahn because the nature of the speeds out there are ridiculous,” Grieser said.

The worst offenders, he said, are Liberty University students returning to school from out of town.

“I think a lot of them, their curfews entice them to try to make it back in an unreasonable amount of time,” he said. “That’s one of the problems we find. It’s nothing to go out on Sunday nights and get them running in the 90s and 100s trying to get back.”

The deputy said a few disciplinary points for breaking curfew don’t fare well against speeding fines in the hundreds of dollars or worse.

“People don’t realize, the speeds we’re talking about, the judges give jail time,” he said. “You’re looking at doing a weekend in jail.”

University spokesman Barry Moore said he wasn’t aware of the trend. Moore said it might be time to remind students about the need to obey the speed limit.

Liberty University police Chief Howard Gregory, a former Virginia State Police captain stationed at Appomattox, said he doesn’t get official reports every time a student gets a ticket, but has heard comments like this before about students trying to beat the midnight curfew.

“We strongly urge our students and anyone else to obey the law,” Gregory said.

In general, Grieser said, the worst offenders are young people — typically young men. It’s rare, he said, to see local people doing those kinds of speeds because Virginians know how easy it is to lose their drivers’ licenses. The deputy said he finds many reckless drivers are from Maryland, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Although the flat surface and smooth turns of the bypass are comparable to the autobahn, that doesn’t mean your Camry is capable of Mercedes-Benz SLR performance — or that you’re the next Mario Andretti.

“When you drive that speed at night, you out-drive your headlights, so you can’t see what’s coming,” he said. “You don’t have time to react to something when you’re going that fast.”

The number of deer carcasses along the road between Amherst and Madison Heights bear out warnings about animals on the roadway, too.

Along with bypass patrols, the new traffic unit also will address traffic complaints in residential areas and enforce commercial motor vehicle laws on Virginia 130 and U.S. routes 501 and 60. Deputies are slated to become active as soon as their old positions are filled, Grieser said. He expects that to happen before Thanksgiving to encourage safer travel during the holiday.

The county has committed to funding the two new positions for one year on a trial basis. At the end of the year, the sheriff’s office will evaluate the positions to determine if the deputies issued enough citations to pay their salaries, he said.

“We may be adding more (deputies) depending on how the unit performs,” he said.

The new unit also could be part of a regional accident reconstruction team. Although some localities such as Lynchburg are equipped to handle their own reconstructions in bad crashes, the state police are charged with the task in most instances.

Virginia State Police Sgt. Drew McCormick said an effort is underway to create a regional team with officers from Lynchburg, Campbell County, Amherst County, Liberty University and the state police.

“It’s a win for all of us,” McCormick said. “With this time of budget reductions, it allows us to apply for grant money together that we wouldn’t have been eligible for otherwise.”

It would also allow the agencies to pool resources in times of major wrecks or when one agency may be short-handed, he said.

“We’re currently working out the final details, but we’re pretty close,” he said. “My understanding is that some of the agencies will be sending their people to crash reconstruction schools after the first of the year.”