116 Tickets Issued During Hazelwood Police's Click It or Ticket Blitz

Click It or Ticket was in full-force in the City of Hazelwood in February.

From February 18 to 22, if a driver wasn't wearing a seatbelt, he or she had a very high chance of getting a ticket.

That's because the Hazelwood Police Department (HPD) participated in the Click It or Ticket initiative's enforcement mobilization.

HPD ticketed 53 motorists for not wearing seat belts during the Click It or Ticket enforcement mobilization, according to the City of Hazelwood.

Click It or TIcket is a nation effort that tries to increast the amount of peopel wearing seatbelts.

During the enforcement effort, officers issued more than 116 traffic citations including: 3 child restraint seat tickets; 31 speeding tickets; 29 other moving traffic violations, numeraous non-moving violation tickets and the aforementioned 53 seat belt tickets.

"A seat belt is the best protection for a driver and all other vehicle occupants in a crash," Gregg Hall, Hazelwood chief of police said in a statement. "We will continue to encourage drivers to make a simple, smart choice to buckle up and Arrive Alive."

In May 2011, the City of Hazelwood became one of the 22 jurisdictions statewide at the time, to pass a primary seat belt ordinance. The passing of the ordinance changed the city's secondary seat belt violation law to a primary violation law. This means that Hazelwood Police officers can ticket drivers for not wearing seat belts without having pulled them over for a separate offense first.

Currently, Missouri is a secondary seat belt law state, which means a law enforcement officer can only ticket a car passenger for not wearing a seat belt if the officer has the car pulled over for a separate offense and notices the seat belt violation.