How Blue Lights in Moorhead Help Police

MOORHEAD, Minn. (KVRR) – Moorhead adds a new color to some of their traffic signal poles.

The City of Moorhead installed blue lights on top of their stop lights to make sure nobody is running a red light. They help police get a better view of traffic lights.

“I don’t have to be sitting right at the intersection because if you have a police car sitting right there, watching the intersection, looking for people who are running red lights, people are going to stop as soon as they see me. Now I can sit back in the parking lot and I can see if the light is red or green,” Moorhead Police Lt. Mike Detloff said.

The lights are located in high traffic areas like 8th Street North and Center Avenue.

Moorhead’s Traffic Engineer Jonathan Atkins plans to add more lights to the city.

“It is about $1,000 per intersection to put those in. So, he is planning on adding a couple more every year just so we continue to have them; eventually the goal will be to have all the traffic control signals to have those blue lights,” Detloff said.

Detloff says Moorhead Police Officers have not been able to dedicate enough time to enforcing traffic laws, but thanks to these blue lights, police spend less time sitting at intersections attempting to catch people running red lights.

“Unfortunately right now, we are basically so understaffed that it is all reactive. We are doing very little proactive. I am not saying we are not doing any traffic stops, we still are doing them. It is just we simply don’t have the staffing or the time to be out there enforcing traffic like we used to,” Detloff said.

Moorhead blue lights at six intersections.