SLO Safety Enhancement Zone for Halloween Weekend
When Halloween falls on a weekend, especially Saturday night, it keeps local law enforcement very busy responding to various calls for service and the sudden emergency.
San Luis Obispo Police have declared the entire city a Safety Enhancement Zone through Sunday in anticipation of more people being out and about including children.
“Typically the Halloween weekend is a busy one for us, we have a lot of activity, a lot of people come into town for the celebration and we have a lot more calls for service, especially noise related problems”, says San Luis Obispo Police Dept. Captain Chris Staley, “so for us we have what’s called a max deployment, we’re actually have all the officers we have available working both tonight and tomorrow night for Halloween itself, we expect the activity levels to be much higher than normal.”
Staley says the goal is to ensure public safety for everyone enjoying and celebrating Halloween.
“During this time frame for the Safety Enhancement Zone, its throughout the entire city, its not just the north end, but the entire city is under the same rules for that”, Staley says, “and its directed at double fines for certain violations including unruly gatherings, noise, open container and urination in public, and so its designed to curb those behaviors that we experience the most during that time frame.”
People we spoke with in the downtown area Friday night were aware of the steeper fines and stepped up law enforcement presence this weekend.
Capt. Staley says Santa Maria Police and the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Department are assisting SLO PD with additional manpower through the weekend.
“In years past we’ve obviously had a large jump in these types of calls during this time frame”, Staley says, “so we’re trying to respond to that and make sure we have adequate resources to address the problems.”
