By Shelby Stewart
Staff Writer
Police are cracking down on speeders in Ortonville and Brandon Township.
“I can tell you that while this construction has been going on, just within the village within a 12 hour period, we wrote 43 tickets,” said Oakland County Sheriff’s Office Brandon substation commander Lt. Greg Glover. “That is a lot, I mean, we pounded it pretty heavy.”
The village streets committee has been looking into mobile radar speed signs, and on Monday night they approved 4-0 for the village manager to go ahead and look into two units.

Council members Tonja Brice, Karen Sleva and Dan Eschmann were absent with notice.
The advantage to the ones that are being looked at are that they are able to be moved around the village and bolted to any existing speed limit sign. The particular models also collect data on when speeders are most frequent so deputies can be placed more efficiently.
“A lot of people don’t realize it, but on most days we only have two cars at a time for the township,” said Glover. “So when we get requests to specifically work traffic on certain roads, especially during I’ll say rush hour, it’s almost impossible for us. My afternoon shift is running call to call, and it is difficult to just sit and run traffic. Most of the calls we get today require two cars, sometimes three.”
Another option that was explored were more stop signs, though both the village and Glover agreed that it wasn’t a long term solution to speeding.
“We don’t have the room in the village on the shoulder for a lot of smart carts,” he said. “There are warning signs that are put on traffic signs that records the speed, kind of gives them a warning, and it also records and tells you what times of the day, how many violations there were. It’ll break down the time of day when your traffic problems are. I think it’s a good thing for the village, I think it’s a good thing for the township as a whole.”
The data can be retrieved on an IPad or other mobile device by the police station.
“We kind of had a rule, something that I put in place when I came out here, of not writing village and township residents tickets if we didn’t have to. We have the option of giving warnings,” said Glover. “Lately, we have stopped giving warnings.”