Waukesha Police Start Anti-Drunken Driving Campaign

The hours leading up to riding with the on an alcohol enforcement grant, I pictured myself watching the police officer making traffic stops, finding that a person was intoxicated and taking them into custody for drunken driving.

I honestly thought that there would be two operating while intoxicated arrests when I rode in the squad car with I was wrong.

The Waukesha Police Department is one of many law enforcement agencies throughout the nation who are participating in the “Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over” campaign to combat drunken driving through Sept. 5. Officers across Wisconsin will be working overtime – funded by grant money – making traffic stops in a way to prevent alcohol-related crashes.

When I first got into the squad car with Wittnebel, who was the officer working on the drunken driving grant, I asked a few general questions about what we would be doing and what I could expect.

It actually was pretty routine – we were going out to look for traffic violations and establish a police presence throughout Waukesha.

“It is not necessarily to arrest people,” Wittnebel told me. “It is more of a deterrence.”

Sgt. Dave Wanner, who is the coordinator for the alcohol and traffic enforcement grants at the police department, echoed those statements in a news release announcing the special enforcement period.

“Drunken driving is entirely preventable,” Wanner said. “During the upcoming Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over crackdown and throughout the year, our goal is not to arrest more drunken drivers. We simply are trying to save lives and prevent injuries. If we can deter people from getting behind the wheel when they’re not sober, we will make progress toward the goal of reducing the number of preventable traffic deaths to Zero In Wisconsin.”

Four hours and a few traffic citations later, we pulled back into the police station – with no drunken driving arrests. I guess that’s a good thing – all the people we pulled over during that four-hour period weren’t driving under the influence of alcohol.

If only it could be that way every night in Wisconsin. Instead, the Wisconsin Department of Transportation gave some scary statistics about drunken driving in this state:

• Wisconsin has the highest rate of drunken driving in the nation. More than 26 percent of Wisconsin adults who were surveyed admitted that they had driven under the influence of alcohol in the previous year, according to a nationwide study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released in 2008. [U.S. DHHS Survey on Drug Use and Health is available online at: http://www.oas.samhsa.gov/2k8/stateDUI/stateDUI.cfm]
• There were approximately 40,000 convictions for drunken driving last year in Wisconsin.
• Last year, alcohol-related crashes killed 220 people in Wisconsin and injured 3,511.

Despite no drunken driving arrests, we spent time on patrol making the police department’s presence known – especially at bar time when people were leaving local establishments and heading home.

We ran into one man – rather he nearly ran into us – who was extremely intoxicated but was biking home. While we were concerned that he was stumbling through a downtown Waukesha parking lot after falling – leaving a nice goose egg on his cheek and a deep laceration on his leg – the man declined an ambulance and a taxi cab several times. Left with no other options because the man wasn’t doing anything wrong, the police let him walk home to Brookfield after strongly advising him about the safety of doing so.

We had to let him go, but we drove in the area an hour later – just to check on him. We didn't see him in the area, so hopefully he made it

But hey – at least he wasn’t driving drunk!