278 Citations in a Day: Lodi's Traffic Enforcement Program and the Grant Behind It

Lodi
Written by Don Bradford
278 Citations in a Day: Lodi's Traffic Enforcement Program and the Grant Behind It

278 Citations in a Day: Lodi's Traffic Enforcement Program and the Grant Behind It

LodiEye — November, 2026

At a Glance

On Tuesday, October 27, officers from seven law enforcement agencies spent the morning writing tickets in Lodi. The operation, part of the Lodi Police Department's state-funded Selective Traffic Enforcement Program, put 33 officers on city streets and produced 278 citations. In Lodi411's calls-for-service record it shows up as 86 traffic stops in a single day against an October average of about 11, most of them between 7 and 10 a.m. on Cherokee Lane, Century Boulevard, Church Street and Kettleman Lane. On November 4 the City Council is expected to accept a $110,000 grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety to continue the program for another year. Nearly all of it, $103,567, pays officer overtime for weekend and holiday DUI patrols, five DUI checkpoints, and more enforcement days like October 27. The state's own rankings explain the interest: Lodi's pedestrian injury count puts it 13th worst among 103 similar-sized California cities, and reported collisions in the city rose from 1,339 in 2023 to 1,413 in 2024.

278
Citations issued in the October 27 operation
86
Lodi PD traffic stops logged that day, vs. about 11 on a normal day
$110,000
OTS grant before the council Nov. 4; 94% is overtime
13th
Lodi's pedestrian-injury rank among 103 cities its size (1 = worst)

What Happened on October 27

The Selective Traffic Enforcement Program, usually shortened to STEP, is the name the Office of Traffic Safety gives to the grants it makes to local police for traffic enforcement. One of the things the grant pays for is periodic multi-agency enforcement days, in which the county's departments lend each other officers so that one city can be saturated for a shift. On October 27 it was Lodi's turn. Officers from the Stockton, Tracy, Manteca, Lathrop and Lodi police departments, the San Joaquin County Sheriff's Office and the California Highway Patrol, 33 in all, worked the city and issued 278 citations.

The Lodi Police Department's own calls for service, published on Lodi411, show the shape of the day. Lodi PD logged 86 traffic stops on October 27. The 30 other days in the month averaged about 11. The stops began a little after 6 a.m., peaked between 7 and 9 a.m. with 37 in two hours, continued through the late morning, and were essentially finished by early afternoon. That timing matches the April operation, which the News-Sentinel reported was also run on a Tuesday. The 86 stops are only Lodi PD's share of the day; stops made by officers from the visiting agencies are logged by their own departments and do not appear in the Lodi feed, which is why the citation count is more than three times the stop count.

Lodi PD traffic stops per day, October 2 through November 1, 2026

Source: Lodi Police Department calls for service via Lodi411 | Counts are Lodi PD stops only. Stops by Stockton, Tracy, Manteca, Lathrop, Sheriff's Office and CHP officers on October 27 are not in this data.

Where the stops happened says something about what the officers were after. The streets with the most stops that morning were South Cherokee Lane and West Century Boulevard with eight each, Church Street and West Kettleman Lane with six, and South School Street and West Turner Road with four. Those are the arterials where the city's collisions concentrate: over the month, Kettleman Lane east and west accounted for 15 of the 103 accident calls, with Turner Road, Lodi Avenue and Reynolds Ranch Parkway next. Century Boulevard was an exception, with eight stops and no accident calls, which suggests the officers were working a known speeding corridor near the schools rather than a crash site.

What the rest of the day looked like

The traffic stops were on top of an ordinary day's business, not instead of it. Lodi PD logged 119 calls on October 27, the highest single-day total in the month. Setting aside the 86 stops, the remaining 33 calls were a normal Tuesday: seven suspicious-incident calls, six animal calls, five disturbances, four transient calls, two batteries, two burglaries and a vandalism. No accident calls were logged on the operation day, which is unusual; the month averaged more than three a day.

The Program's History in Lodi

The multi-agency day is not new. The News-Sentinel reported a four-agency version in November 2019, with Tracy, Manteca and Lathrop sending officers to Lodi for a Tuesday operation that produced 185 stops, 168 citations, four tows and three arrests, including a Lodi man arrested for street racing. This April's operation, also on a Tuesday, had grown to seven agencies and 36 officers, and produced 392 stops, 358 citations and three misdemeanor arrests, one of them a driver clocked at 70 mph in a 30 mph zone. The October operation, at 33 officers and 278 citations, was somewhat smaller than April's. The program also sends Lodi officers to the other cities when it is their turn, so the officer-hours roughly balance out across the county.

Operation Agencies Officers Stops Citations Arrests
Nov. 19, 2019 (Tuesday) Lodi, Tracy, Manteca, Lathrop not reported 185 168 3
April 14, 2026 (Tuesday) Lodi, Stockton, Tracy, Manteca, Lathrop, Sheriff, CHP 36 392 358 3
Oct. 27, 2026 (Tuesday) Lodi, Stockton, Tracy, Manteca, Lathrop, Sheriff, CHP 33 not reported 278 not reported

Sources: Lodi News-Sentinel and CBS Sacramento (2019); Steve Mann, Lodi News-Sentinel, April 21, 2026; Steve Mann, About Town (October 2026). The April date is approximate; the column said "last Tuesday" in an April 21 edition.

The grant itself has been renewed for years. In October 2021 the department received $95,000 from OTS for a program running through September 2022, covering the same list of activities: DUI checkpoints and patrols, hands-free phone enforcement, bicycle and pedestrian enforcement, and enforcement of the violations that cause the most crashes, which the department identified as speeding, failure to yield, stop sign and red light running, and improper turns and lane changes. The grant before the council now is $110,000, about 16 percent more than five years ago.

Where the $110,000 Goes

The November 4 consent calendar item, C.2, asks the council to adopt a resolution authorizing the department to participate in the program and to appropriate the grant. The staff report, by Management Analyst Candice Alaniz, breaks the money down this way:

Line Amount Share
Officer overtime $103,567 94.2%
Training and education (SFST, ARIDE, Drug Recognition Expert) $3,723 3.4%
Medicare on overtime $1,554 1.4%
Special department materials $1,156 1.1%
Total $110,000 100%

Source: Lodi City Council agenda, Nov. 4, 2026, item C.2. Revenue is booked to State Special Grants, account 21400000-56421; appropriations to 21499000. No General Fund match is listed.

In plain terms, the grant is an overtime fund. It pays officers to work extra shifts on weekend and holiday evenings for DUI saturation patrols, to staff five DUI checkpoints during the grant period, and to run driver's license checkpoints alongside each DUI checkpoint, which the staff report ties to hit-and-run collisions. It also covers motorcycle, bicycle and pedestrian, distracted driving and general traffic enforcement, and keeps officers current on the federal field sobriety and drug-recognition certifications. The stated goal is to reduce fatal and injury collisions where DUI or speed is the primary cause, along with motorcycle, bicycle and pedestrian collisions.

The staff report does not include the grant period dates, a grant number, prior-year results, or any collision or arrest statistics. The results of recent checkpoints come from news briefs instead. A checkpoint in the 1000 block of South Cherokee Lane, run from 8 p.m. to 2 a.m., contacted 410 vehicles and made no DUI arrests, though it produced three arrests on other charges and 17 citations for unlicensed or suspended-license driving. A checkpoint on West Turner Road produced one DUI arrest, one drug arrest and eight license citations. That pattern, few DUI arrests and many license citations, is why the driver's license checkpoint is written into the grant alongside the DUI one.

How Lodi Ranks on Road Safety

The Office of Traffic Safety publishes annual rankings that compare each California city with others of similar size. Lodi is in Group C, cities of roughly 50,000 to 100,000 people, which had 103 members in the 2023 rankings, the most recent available. A rank of 1 is the worst in the group. The rankings are the clearest statement of why the state keeps funding enforcement here and what it is trying to move.

Lodi's OTS ranking among cities its size, selected categories (1 = worst)

Source: California Office of Traffic Safety crash rankings, Lodi, 2019, 2022 and 2023 | Group C had 105 cities in 2019, 104 in 2022 and 103 in 2023. Lower bars are worse.

Two things stand out. First, pedestrians. Lodi had 28 pedestrian victims killed or injured in 2023, up from 14 in 2022 and 8 in 2019, and its rank went from 83rd of 105 in 2019 to 13th of 103 in 2023. Child pedestrians under 15 ranked 18th and pedestrians 65 and older ranked 17th. The city's overall count of people killed or injured in collisions was 190 in 2023, up from 144 the year before and back to the 2019 level. Second, speed and nighttime collisions are the areas where Lodi does comparatively well: 24 speed-related injury collisions ranked 70th of 103, and 13 nighttime collisions ranked 83rd. Alcohol-involved victims were 21 in 2023, ranking 61st, down from 27 in 2019.

Category 2019 2022 2023 2023 rank
Total killed and injured 189 144 190 61 of 103
Alcohol-involved victims 27 25 21 61 of 103
Pedestrian victims 8 14 28 13 of 103
Bicyclist victims 13 9 10 76 of 103
Motorcycle victims 8 5 11 36 of 103
Speed-related injury collisions 19 16 24 70 of 103
Nighttime injury collisions (9 p.m.–3 a.m.) 17 16 13 83 of 103
Hit-and-run injury collisions 14 14 14 55 of 103
DUI arrests 127 not reported not reported —

Source: California Office of Traffic Safety crash rankings for Lodi. OTS shows 0 DUI arrests for Lodi in 2022 and 2023 with a rank of 1, which is a reporting gap rather than a result; the 2019 figure of 127 is the last year with a reported count.

The city's own numbers point the same direction. Lodi PD's statistics page reports 1,339 collisions in 2023 and 1,413 in 2024, a 5.5 percent increase, while citations were nearly flat at 2,591 and 2,607. The traffic unit that handles this work is small: one sergeant, two full-time traffic officers and two part-time community service officers. The department notes that nearly half of Lodi's injury collisions involve a driver traveling at an unsafe speed. A 278-citation day is more than a tenth of a normal year's citations, which is the point of borrowing 30 officers for a morning.

What a Month of Lodi Traffic Calls Shows

The Lodi411 calls-for-service record for October 2 through November 1 gives a sense of the ordinary traffic workload the grant supplements. Over 31 days Lodi PD logged 406 traffic stops, 105 vehicle code violation calls, 103 accident calls, 22 DUI calls and three reckless-driving calls. Of the accident calls, 25 were hit-and-runs and six were logged with injuries. The injury collisions were spread across the city: Ham Lane, Turner Road, Central Avenue, Tienda Drive, Cherokee Lane and Vine Street.

Lodi PD traffic-related calls by hour of day, October 2026

Source: Lodi Police Department calls for service via Lodi411 | 31 days, Oct. 2 through Nov. 1, 2026. Traffic stops include the Oct. 27 operation.

Accidents follow the commute and the school day, building from 10 a.m. and peaking between 6 and 8 p.m. Traffic stops come in two blocks: a morning block from 7 to 10 a.m., where officers are working the arterials, and a late-night block from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m., where they are working the bars and the DUI shifts the grant pays for. The 22 DUI calls for the month, about five a week, were scattered through the day and the week; Saturdays and Sundays had four each, but so did Tuesday. West Kettleman Lane led both the stop count, with 56, and the accident count, with eight, followed on both lists by Cherokee Lane. Kettleman is also where three of the month's DUI calls were logged.

Halloween weekend, which the grant's holiday DUI enforcement is meant to cover, produced two DUI calls in Lodi, both on Sunday, November 1, one at 1:56 a.m. on West Oak Street as the downtown bars closed and one at 11:47 a.m. on Church Street. Lodi411's companion report on the weekend's shootings nationally includes the full Lodi call record for those three days.

LodiEye is the original civic-reporting and analysis arm of Lodi411.com, a citizen-run civic data and transparency platform serving Lodi, California and San Joaquin County. LodiEye gathers information of public interest, applies editorial judgment to public records, meetings, and data, and publishes original explanatory reporting for its readers — the work of a newsroom, and a representative of the news media as that term is defined under federal law. Our reporting emphasizes primary sources, public data, and full source transparency so readers can check every claim. LodiEye complements, and does not replace, the other outlets covering this region; for additional reporting on Lodi, San Joaquin County, and the broader region, we also encourage readers to consult the Lodi News-Sentinel, Stocktonia, The Sacramento Bee, CalMatters, and other established news organizations. Our full editorial standards and news-media-status statement is published at lodi411.com/editorial-standards.

This LodiEye report was produced using artificial intelligence tools under the direction and review of the editor. Lodi411 uses multiple AI platforms in its research and publication workflow, including Anthropic's Claude and Perplexity AI, in the following ways:

Source Discovery

  • AI tools located the November 4, 2026 City Council agenda and the staff report for item C.2, the Office of Traffic Safety crash rankings for Lodi for 2019, 2022 and 2023, Lodi PD's published statistics and traffic services pages, and News-Sentinel and television coverage of the 2019 and April 2026 multi-agency operations and recent DUI checkpoints. The starting point was Steve Mann's About Town item on the October operation.

Credibility Validation

  • The grant amount and budget lines were taken from the council staff report rather than secondary coverage. OTS ranking figures were read directly from the OTS site; the 2022 and 2023 DUI arrest entries of zero were flagged as a reporting gap rather than reported as results.

Analysis and Synthesis

  • AI tools tallied Lodi Police Department calls for service from the Lodi411 feed by day, hour, offense type and street for October 2 through November 1, 2026, identified October 27 as the operation day from the traffic-stop count, and compared it with the rest of the month.

Presentation

  • AI tools drafted the article, built the charts and tables, and formatted the page for Lodi411.

Final Review

  • The editor reviewed the draft, the figures and the sources before publication. Figures from the Lodi411 feed reflect Lodi PD calls only and will not match citation totals that include the visiting agencies.

Lodi411 believes transparency about AI use serves its readers. Readers who spot errors are encouraged to write editor@lodi411.com so corrections can be made.

Sources

Don Bradford
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