Const. Mike Seel is the new face of tickets, and Twitter, for the Regina Police Service.
He goes by the nickname “Hawkeye,” given to him by the former face of RPS traffic, Const. Curtis Warnar, for his ability to catch drivers on their cell phones. Seel took over the role in February, when Warnar moved to a new position with RPS’ forensic identification unit.
Seel isn’t new to traffic and he’s been working with the unit for four years, however the role of community policing and public interaction through Twitter is new to him.
“Pulling people over is a fairly negative job,” Seel said. “So it’s actually quite fun engaging people in a different manner, and educating people to hopefully negate those problems in the future. Just having more of a positive interaction with people.”
Seel said his passion for traffic safety stems from the jobs biggest negative, the grisly accidents. He said the destruction on the roads is what makes the role of the traffic unit so important.
“People think it’s all about us writing tickets,” Seel said. “We’re enforcing these laws because we go to crashes more regularly than we’d like to. People being injured or killed because of speeding, or distracted or impaired driving.”
He said distracted driving is one of the biggest problems on the road, just behind impaired driving as the leading cause of accidents causing injury.
When patrolling the roads, Seel knows what to look for. He said drivers looking down to their lap is always a sign of someone using their cell phone. Most perpetrators are caught at red lights, with the high time of the day being evening rush hour.
But it isn’t always just your average texting and driving ticket.
"The worst one that I’ve caught was a gentleman who was, to put it properly, watching adult videos on his phone at a red light.” Seel said.
It was this keen eye for violations that made Seel the right person to take over the traffic units Twitter account. He documents some distracted drivers, using gifs and memes, to engage with his 6,300 followers.
Seel said he’s issued roughly 250 traffic tickets in two months. Distracted driving, speeding, suspended licenses and unregistered vehicles are some of the most common offenses.
