Teachers, students and parents gathered outside the school in anticipation for the first day of the new school year. They had help getting there safely.
Safety issues arise because of fast-driving cars and illegally parked cars near the school. Military police (MP) officers intensively cracked down on speeding and illegal parking, Aug 29, near the Yongsan Fire Department and Seoul American Elementary School to ensure the safety of students and pedestrians.
"Investigators are here today to help control traffic and patrol to enforce speed limit to make sure that everybody is going in correct speed and nobody is speeding. It is very important because we have a lot of kids walking around and so kids can cross the street safely," said Jacob Ramirez, Investigator, U.S. Army Military Police Investigations.
MP use a radar gun to crack down on speeding cars. If the vehicle is driving faster than 25km/h, the garrison's speed limit, then the driver is sighted by the investigators.
Illegally parked cars also pose a great threat to pedestrians as they can block the view of the pedestrians as well as vehicles traveling down the road. This increases the chance of a vehicle / pedestrian accidents.
MP did this crackdown not only for the safety issues, but for communication between the Yongsan community and MP. "We are enforcing the speed limit because we want the public to know the fact that we are really concerned about safety and what we actually do on the post. We want to show that we are not bad guys, we really work for the community and we want kids look up to us," said Sgt. Samuel Hansard, 142nd MP Company, traffic noncommissioned officer in charge (NCOIC).
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