Waterford - No sooner was their checkpoint back up for Round II Saturday afternoon than a lookout spotted more blatant lawbreaking on Clark Lane.

The specific violation concerned what the spotter - a plainclothes Waterford police officer - didn't see: a seat belt across the body of a passing motorist.

So when the green Jeep Cherokee rolled up to the police checkpoint a half-minute later, a pair of uniformed officers in fluorescent jackets slapped a sticky note on its windshield and told the driver to pull into Stenger Farm Park.

There the 20-year-old driver was issued a stern reminder about motor vehicle safety in the form of a $92 ticket for not buckling up.

He was one of 40 motorists ticketed by Waterford police between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. at the Clark Lane checkpoint as part of WAVE 41 of Click It or Ticket.

From Nov. 14 to 28, all of Connecticut's municipal departments, residential state troopers' offices and troopers patrolling Connecticut roadways are taking part in the National Click It or Ticket campaign, enforcing seat-belt laws and other moving violations.

In the 13 years that Traffic Officer Dave Anderson has been running Click It or Ticket checkpoints, he has seen the seat-belt compliance rate in Waterford improve from just above 70 percent to the high 80s, he said.

Thanks to a persistent effort, motorists are getting the message that seat-belt use saves lives and is the law, Anderson said. He estimated the cost of Saturday's half-day checkpoint at $1,300, paid through a grant from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Decades of statistics show a strong connection between seat-belt use and accident survival. More than half of the 23,382 people killed in motor vehicle crashes in 2009 were not wearing seat belts, according to the highway safety administration.

Waterford's checkpoints are well-publicized events, with media announcements and conspicuous road signs. "We try to play fair," Anderson said.

Yet the department does use lookouts who are stationed 100 yards or so away from checkpoints to catch drivers who don't wear seat belts until they see a checkpoint. These officers are also looking for people who are texting or using handheld cell phones (a $125 ticket for a first offense).

Anderson said they catch some people not wearing seat belts who later pretend that they were, but the majority of those individuals come clean and admit it, "especially when you tell them that an officer at the corner saw them."

Once a motorist is pulled over for a seat-belt or cellphone violation, the police require him or her to show a valid license, vehicle registration and insurance card.

Sometimes police discover serious offenses when issuing checkpoint tickets, such as an outstanding warrant or drug possession.

The two occupants of the green Jeep aroused such suspicions. After speaking with the two young men, checkpoint officers radioed for a drug-sniffing dog and an officer had them step out of the vehicle for a pat-down.

The canine officer later asked if they "smoked weed today." The driver nodded an affirmative.

That answer was no surprise to the nose of a nearby checkpoint officer. "Unless you do it outside in a windstorm, it just hangs around," he told the young men.

The dog sniffed the car for a few minutes. When the canine's handler came back empty-handed, the young men were free to go with just a seat-belt violation.

As he prepared to exit the park, the driver chalked up the incident to police "profiling" them as the type of guys who would have "some sort of drugs in the car."

"We are young white kids, looking kind of dingy," he said. "We haven't shaved in a couple days."

The Jeep merged back onto Clark Lane, both driver and passenger wearing seat belts.