On Tuesday, Derby Police officers along with student resource officers Courtney Carlson and Amanda Stitt conducted seat belt checks in the student parking lot and handed out seat belt tickets to students not wearing them.

A school-wide email was sent out on April 12 to notify the students of the police presence at Derby High School.

“Starting the week of April 15 members of the Derby Police Department will conduct seat belt enforcement checks on campus. Please remember to always buckle up,” the district wrote in an email.  

Around 11 students were ticketed.

“A lot of (the students) were like, ‘oh yeah, there was an email about that,’ and they were handed a copy of the e-mail also so they know they were warned that we were going to be doing this, it’s not a surprise or anything,” Stitt said. “So the response was more along that line, in the sense of, ‘oh yeah,’ or, ‘I never wear my seatbelt.’ Those were the two more common ones.”

The police department decided to conduct student seat belt checks more frequently due to the amount of accidents on Rock Road and the lack of student drivers wearing their seat belts on a regular basis.

“It used to be something that we would do every year for SAFE club, but this year we’re going to be doing more of them… there are always a lot of accidents on Rock Road and we’re trying to make sure people are wearing their seat belts because a majority of the major injuries we see are because people don’t wear their seat belt,” Stitt said.