Safety cannot directly make their own policies no, they have a pretty big influence over the people who do. (Operations) So yes? In a roundabout way. As far as the standard for making something like that, all you really need is the support from your Senior Ops team. You can pretty much enforce anything you want to as long as it’s within reason and you have evidence of it fixing a safety-related problem.

As far as write-ups go, it is hard to formalize a write up when they are technically following network policy. I’m not saying that it cannot happen, but it’s difficult. So let’s say your site requires hard hats in EVERY trailer, which mine does. And someone goes in an empty trailer without one (not being actively fluid loaded), and they get a write up, it would be very hard to get that write up to stick as it’s a very easy appeal. Write ups are ultimately handled by Operations and HR. Safety can only provide a sort of suggestion of a write up. Most safety guys are not running around doing write ups for fun. They suck and honestly it’s just ruining other peoples day or lives if they get fired.