C.L. traffic focus - how effective, really?

Gus Philpott
Woodstock Advocate
September 7, 2010

When the Crystal Lake P.D., the Crystal Lake Park District Police and the McHenry County Sheriff's Department combined forces last Friday night to suck up some grant dollars, how effective were they, really?

Due to a skillfully-worded press release, you can't really tell.

While the officers conducted a five-hour operation, according to the Crystal Lake PD's press release, the release did not indicate how many officers and patrol cars were involved. However many there were, they wrote 48 tickets.

But how many different drivers got tickets? It is a common practice to issue multiple citations to a single driver. One driver might get a ticket for DUI, no valid DL and no insurance. That's three citations of the 48.

Another missing key figure is how many vehicles, in total, were stopped and checked? There is no way to guess at that number.

A worrisome word in the press release (and one that probably won't be used in the future) is "predetermined", as in "...stopped predetermined groups of vehicles ..." How did they determine the "predetermined group"? Were they all red? All imports? All Corvettes? All drivers under age 25? All Hispanics? Horrors....

Of the violations identified were
4 for Driving While under the Influence of Alcohol;
3 for No Valid Driver’s License;
1 for Driving While License Revoked;
4 for Unlawful Possession of Drug Paraphernalia;
2 for Unlawful Possession of Cannabis;
15 for Operation of an Uninsured Motor Vehicle;
29

So that's 29 out of the 48. What were the other 19 tickets for? The sweep was to target impaired or dangerous drivers.

How'd they do?

Only four (4) tickets were issued for "impaired or dangerous drivers." Was the sweep a success, in the eyes of the public?

There is nothing dangerous about operating a motor vehicle if you don't have a driver's license in your pocket, for driving while revoked, for operating an uninsured vehicle, for having paraphernalia in your car or even having cannabis in your car. It's illegal, but it's not "dangerous." The "dangerous" part is the actual operation of the vehicle.

What really happened was three departments and several officers and squad cars spent five hours to nab four DUIs.

And what were those other 19 tickets for?