Holiday DUI Crackdown - oh, really?

Gus Philpott
Woodstock Advocate
January 11, 2010

Check out Brian Slupski's good article in today's Northwest Herald (Page 3A or online at http://www.nwherald.com/) about the "crackdown" by the Woodstock Police Department on drunk driving during the holidays.

What "crackdown"? (Brian doesn't write the headlines, so cut him some slack on the headline.)

According to the article, officers of the Woodstock Police Department made 11 arrests for DUI between November 18 and January 3. That's a "crackdown"? Eleven DUI arrests in 46 days??? Twenty (20) hours of overtime in 46 days?

If they wanted to make a crackdown, they could arrest 11 in one night. Of course, they'd have to sit outside "certain" bars in Woodstock or have a spotter at a bar just outside Woodstock who would report drivers leaving the bar and on the way into town.

Woodstock got one of those infamous grants (grants (of all types and by many departments of government) are big business these days) for $20,000. (What does it cost to jump through all the hoops to end up with $20,000?)

And then it spent only about $1,900 of the $20,000 during that 46-day period. That was for about 20 hours of overtime. So overtime costs about $95.00/hour. Whew! I'm in the wrong line of work!

The grant, from IDOT, will also be used for "saturation patrols" on other holidays, such as St. Patrick's Day, July 4th and Labor Day,

Oh, yes. One other enforcement effort: seatbelt safety checks. Guess where the big bucks will be spent. Not much court time with those.