Board authorizes sheriff's secondary road patrol grant, commissioners question data sources

Washtenaw County commissioners approved a resolution authorizing a grant to fund two deputies assigned to secondary road patrol and traffic-accident investigation.

Lieutenant Kratzenberg explained the program: two positions are funded by the grant (with a third traffic deputy funded by Ypsilanti Township). The deputies focus on crash reconstruction and serious-injury investigations and are deployed to non-contracted or underserved areas as needed. Kratzenberg said the county also participates in a separate strategic-enforcement program that uses third-party aggregate traffic data (referred to as Urban SDK) to identify road segments with speeding or crash patterns and deploy enforcement resources accordingly.

Commissioners asked for historical program metrics and where prior deployments occurred; one commissioner requested data from the prior grant cycle and deployment locations. Several commissioners expressed discomfort about the privacy implications of third-party traffic data derived from vehicle telematics and mobile apps, though Kratzenberg said the county receives aggregate, non-identifying speed and volume statistics (e.g., numbers of vehicles and average overspeed counts) and does not receive personal identifiers.

Why it matters: The grant funds specialized deputies who investigate serious crashes and support county-wide traffic safety efforts; the meeting also surfaced community privacy questions about law-enforcement use of aggregated mobility data.

What comes next: The board approved the grant by roll call; commissioners asked staff to provide historical deployment data from previous grant cycles and to clarify the data sources and safeguards used for strategic enforcement.