The DeKalb Police Department received a grant from the Illinois Department of Transportation to increase traffic safety and enforcement.

The grant, which the department has received three years in a row, goes toward research and training in traffic safety and for crash data analysis. This year DeKalb Police received about $136,000 to be used for officer’s overtime pay to monitor roads with high accident rates, said DeKalb Police Lt. Carl Leoni.

Streets with the most accidents and traffic include stretches of Annie Glidden Road, Lincoln Highway and Sycamore Road, Leoni said. Monitoring of these days will run from 7 a.m. to 3 a.m. the following day.

The grant, known as a Traffic Law Enforcement Program grant, will allow an extra 50 hours of traffic enforcement per week, Leoni said, which can be used for roadside safety checks, seatbelt checks and patrols of high accident areas.

In previous years, the grant has paid for a squad car and a full-time officer’s salary who was only assigned to traffic safety, Leoni said. Funds have also gone to traffic safety training for officers.

From Jan. 1 to Oct. 31, about 1,325 accidents were reported, a decrease from about 1,510 in 2007, and from 2006 where about 1,375 accidents were reported, according to DeKalb Police records.

“We still have a downward trend,” Leoni said. “We hope that it is a positive effect of the traffic enforcement.”

For the last three years, the intersection at Annie Glidden Road and Lincoln Highway has had the highest accident rates, according to the DeKalb Police Department annual report. Other high accident rate intersections include First and Locust Streets and Barber Green and Sycamore Roads. A total of 2,070 accidents were reported in 2007, an increase from 1,861 in 2006 and from 1,925 in 2005, according to the report.