Riverhead police to join statewide seat belt crackdown, May 18-31
Riverhead police will spread fixed and roving seat-belt details across town as New York launches a two-week crackdown on unbuckled drivers, passengers and children.
Riverhead police are putting fixed and roving safety-restraint details across town as New York opened its annual Click It or Ticket seat-belt crackdown, a two-week enforcement push that began May 18 and runs through May 31. The campaign is meant to catch motorists who are not buckled up, or who are wearing belts incorrectly, before those choices turn into injuries on Suffolk County roads.
The statewide kickoff was tied to a Border-to-Border Seat Belt Enforcement press conference at the Crown Point Historic Site, where the New York State Police joined local, state, federal and regional law-enforcement partners. The New York State Department of Motor Vehicles said officers will focus on adults and teens who are not wearing seat belts or wearing them the wrong way, along with children who are not properly restrained. The Governor’s Traffic Safety Committee said the purpose is simple: remind drivers and passengers that seat belts save lives and are required by law.
For Riverhead, the campaign is more than a symbolic reminder. Town police said the details will be spread across the community, signaling that enforcement will not be limited to one intersection or one neighborhood. That approach puts motorists on notice on the roads where commuters, workers, shoppers and weekend travelers are most likely to move through the Town of Riverhead as spring traffic builds toward summer.
The department has recent numbers to back up the enforcement push. In June 2025, Riverhead police said they issued 186 summonses for seat-belt violations during the previous campaign. In a separate report on the broader Buckle Up New York-Click It or Ticket effort, the Town Police Department said it issued 747 summonses during the mobilization, showing how aggressively the town has used the state campaign as a traffic-safety tool.
The statewide record shows why local police keep returning to the same enforcement model. In 2024, New York law-enforcement agencies issued 112,031 tickets during the Buckle Up New York-Click It or Ticket mobilization, including 15,049 for improper seat-belt or child-restraint violations. Last year’s state campaign ran May 19 through June 1, making this year’s May 18-31 window part of an annual pattern rather than a one-time sweep. For Riverhead, the message is that basic traffic enforcement remains a front-line public-safety strategy, aimed at preventing the next serious crash before it happens.
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