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New South Wales Highway Patrol recently concluded a period of high-visibility operations on state roads, with police Sergeant Dave Bramble reporting positive results for the Inverell and surrounding New England area.
Sgt. Bramble said Operation Saturation, which increased highway patrol presence on New England roads by approximately 40 shifts over the past month, was brought about by a rollout of extra funding from the Roads and Maritime Services (RMS) seeking to increase the visibility of police as a general deterrent for local drivers.
“The last saturation which has just finished ran for a month and basically every highway patrolman in the area was given two cancelled rest days and it increased the visibility of the New England Highway Patrol by about 40 shifts over the month,” he said.
Police made numerous arrests across the New England area as a result of the operation, prompting Sgt. Bramble to dub the regional saturation a success.
“Any operation that makes us more visible gives us more opportunity to catch people doing the wrong thing,” he said.
“We found that the high visibility part of the operation is what we really want to address.”
“We’d be quite happy to go out there, increase our visibility and catch no-one doing the wrong thing.”
This year marks the second that Operation Saturation has run across NSW, aiming to maintain a constant presence of Highway Patrol vehicles and officers on the road.