Making a clean sweep

Patrol nets record arrests in annual sweep of Cape County

By Mike Wells ~ Southeast Missourian

An annual sweep to get drunken drivers off Cape Girardeau County roads has netted the Missouri State Highway Patrol a record number of arrests this year.

By the end of this year's four-week "Safe and Sober" campaign, the patrol had made 63 arrests, with 25 of them occurring the weekend of May 10 alone. To some, this total highlights a growing problem in Cape Girardeau County but others say law enforcement is being more effective in combating it.

The campaign ran each Thursday through Saturday night from April 17 to May 10, with four patrolmen roving the highways in search of drunken drivers. This was the fourth year the patrol concentrated such efforts on the county, known as Southeast Missouri's hot spot for its total number of alcohol-related crashes.

"Our highest DWI-arresting officers were put on a 12-hour operation those nights and patrolled all area roads," said Lt. Jim McNiell. "All they were required to do was concentrate on impaired drivers."

McNiell is in charge of enforcement operations along the Interstate 55 side of Troop E, a 13-county portion of the state. He said most offenders are generally younger drivers in their teens and early twenties, but are not necessarily college students. In the three previous campaigns, the patrol netted about 45 arrests per year.

"It's unbelievable the problem we're seeing coming out of Cape Girardeau County," he said. "It's not just a Cape problem, though. It's a Southeast Missouri problem."

The Safe and Sober campaign was coordinated by zone supervisor Sgt. Blaine Adams of Jackson. He said the last two weekends of the operation were more effective.

"A lot of it has to do with the time we conduct the operation," he said. "We've done it in the past when school's going on," Adams said. "We're concentrating on DWIs, but we're still enforcing traffic laws and underage arrests, drug possession and everything we can find."

In this year's campaign, 218 other arrests were made, including traffic offenses and other criminal offenses, McNiell said.

While Cape Girardeau County annually has the highest number of alcohol-related crashes in the region, those numbers can be misleading, said patrol Capt. Chris Ricks.

"Cape County had more crashes, but it's a more populated area," Ricks said. "Property damage, such as fender benders, are much more likely in urban areas with high traffic in the early mornings and late evenings. You probably don't have any more of a problem with alcohol-related crashes than any other part of the state."

In 2001, the patrol investigated 2,969 crashes in the county. Of those, 100 involved alcohol as a contributing factor -- amounting to 3.7 percent of the total. That percentage drops even lower during the five previous years. The 2001 crashes in Bollinger, Scott and Stoddard counties only have a combined total of 1,891 crashes, but their 155 alcohol-related accidents accounted for more than 9.3 percent of their total.

Adams said the surrounding counties possibly have higher percentages of alcohol-related crashes because of economic problems and lower DWI conviction rates in those counties.

McNiell says many of those intoxicated drivers start drinking in Cape Girardeau or over the river in East Cape Girardeau, Ill., before heading back home to other counties.

"Once the bars close here, we're finding these people are crossing the river to East Cape Girardeau, then come back into Missouri intoxicated and are traveling the area roadways from Cape Girardeau into Scott, Stoddard and other counties," McNiell said.

A sobriety checkpoint jointly operated at Morgan Oak Street by police and the patrol netted 23 drunken drivers coming across the bridge about five years ago on Halloween night, he said. That was the most arrests coming out of a single checkpoint in the state's history.

Though drunken drivers continue to plague county roads, local law enforcement have apparently gotten better at catching them. In 2001, the cities of Cape Girardeau and Jackson and the county sheriff's department jointly reported 334 DWI arrests. That number jumped in 2002 to more than 487 arrests. So far in 2003, Cape Girardeau alone has recorded 106 DWI arrests in the first five months of the year.

mwells@semissourian.com

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