Crystal Lake Police crackdown - needed

Gus Philpott
Woodstock Advocate
May 10, 2013

This morning's Northwest Herald carried an article about the next crackdown by Crystal Lake Police Department on bad drivers.

Recently, Cal Skinner wrote about the intensity of a police effort on U.S. 14 just west of Route 176. You can read about that here.

Are these "crackdowns" still needed? What do they involve?

The Crystal Lake cops will be busy "Friday through May 27". Since the article appeared on Friday (today), I wondered whether the crackdown will be May 10-May 27 or May 17-May 27.

Paragraph 1 says it is to "make sure residents take time to remember safe driving practices." Yeah, sure.

Police will target seatbelt law violations and drunk drivers.

How about if cops forget primary seatbelt enforcement? Compliance in Illinois is way over 90%. I think it is somewhere in the 92-93% range.

DUIs? Go get 'em. Hint: how about parking down the street from bars when they begin to close down for the night?

Oh, about all those DUIs? In a recent three-day campaign, the cops nailed three for alcohol- or drug-related offenses, according to the Northwest Herald. That's out of 73 citations. 3/73 = 4.1%

McHenry County Blog provided a much better explanation on May 8 of results by the Crystal Lake PD, which stopped 58 motorists and

"Issued a total of 73 traffic citations, which included:

22 safety belt citations
16 citations for speeding
8 citations for operation uninsured motor vehicle
10 citations for other moving violations
9 citations for unlawful use of an electronic communications device
5 disregarding a stop sign citations
3 citations for equipment violations

"In addition, 3 persons were arrested for the following offenses:

1 adult male for DUI alcohol and BAC over .08
1 adult male for DUI alcohol and no valid driver’s license
1 juvenile for possession of drug paraphernalia and possession of cannabis"