Published: October 10, 2008 05:49 pm         

DUI grant

Agencies team up for crackdown

Congratulations to those involved in landing $15,000 to crack down on impaired drivers.

Local authorities gathered for a news conference last week to announce that they had received a grant from the Indiana Institute of Criminal Justice to form a DUI task force to be led by Sgt. Jill Rife of the Cass County Sheriff’s Department and Sgt. Rob Smith of the Logansport Police Department.

It’s great to see local police agencies teaming up to make our roads and highways safer.

Money from the grant will cover the cost of overtime to carry out saturation patrols and the occasional sobriety checkpoint. And the effort will be throughout the year, not just around major holidays.

In putting together the grant application, Rife assembled statistics for Cass County between June 30, 2007, and July 31 of this year. Anyone who doubts the need for a crackdown need only examine the numbers:

• 152 operating while intoxicated arrests.

• 1,353 crashes, 36 of which were alcohol-related.

• 198 personal-injury crashes, 11 of which were alcohol-related.

• Three fatal crashes, one of which was alcohol-related.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, nearly 13,000 people died in alcohol-related crashes last year — a decline of 3.7 percent from 2006.

Still, much work remains to be done, and the grant obtained by local law enforcement agencies will help in the effort.

NHTSA estimates that someone is killed by a drunken driver about once every 40 minutes.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving figures that three in every 10 Americans will be involved in an alcohol-related crash at some time in their lives.

The message local law enforcement agencies are trying to send is clear: Don’t drink and drive. If you ignore that message, you might very well wind up in jail.