Police threaten speeders: ‘We’ll call your mother’

NEENAH, WI (WFRV) — The Neenah police department decided to use humor this week to get drivers to slow down.

One neighborhood has seen one too many speeders pass through and police took action to keep everyone safe.

You can still see the speed trailers sitting on the east and west ends of Oak Castle drive in Neenah.

Yesterday the signs said: “Slow down, or we’ll call your mother! Sincerely, the Neenah police department.”

“The signs caught my attention because you don’t see humorous signs from the police department that often,” says Brent Hansen.

Hansen works on Industrial and drives through the Marathon roundabout and on Oak drive everyday.

“I don’t notice the speed as often because I’m driving, but I do see patrol here every once and a while.”

That extra patrol is in place because some of the neighborhood’s residents complained people were just driving too fast.

“We got a lot of complaints, obviously this is a residential area, we have kids and families out here,” says Samuel Santiago with the Neenah police department. “We’re getting complaints about their speed and driving recklessly. At the end of the day trying to figure out what we can do to increase the quality of life for our citizens.”

One person we spoke with who did not want to go on camera said in the time they’ve lived in the neighborhood, they’ve seen the number of speeders decrease.

“It’s been working, we’ve given multiple traffic stops here and sometimes people just don’t realize they’re going to little too fast.”

But was the department’s hint of humor received?

“I would hope that something like that could help again it’ll catch their attention to kind of be aware of their speed,” says Hansen.