DWI CRACKDOWN IN CAPE IS A GOOD START

When 20 percent of the drivers going to or coming from Illinois on a Saturday night have been drinking enough for police to suspect they are drunk under the law, the time has come for a renewed, harsh crackdown on drunken driving in Cape Girardeau.

During a five-hour period on Halloween night and into the wee hours of the following morning, a sobriety checkpoint by police on Morgan Oak Street near the Mississippi River bridge resulted in the arrests of 23 motorists for alleged drunken driving. Of the 500 vehicles police stopped that night, 102 drivers were suspected of having had too much to drink.

Those 102 were subjected to a field sobriety test, and 33 were asked to take a Breathalyzer test. Two refused, and in accordance with the law their licenses were suspended on the spot. The blood-alcohol contents of 23 of the 31 who agreed to the Breathalyzer test were 0.10 percent or higher, which constitutes drunken driving.

What is disturbing is the fact that all of the people who had been drinking and driving that night were coming back from Illinois or were headed there. Illinois clubs can stay open long past the closing time of bars in Missouri, and much of the crowd across the river in the early-morning hours is from Cape Girardeau.

Results of the Morgan Oak Street checkpoint led Lt. Jim McNeill of the Missouri State Highway Patrol to call the drunken-driving problem in Cape Girardeau "serious" and "alarming." McNeill said: "We have a very serious problem if one out of every five drivers had to be pulled out of the vehicle to check his sobriety. Never have I seen a sobriety checkpoint so successful."

The dreadful fact is McNeill probably under-assessed the problem. It would not be unrealistic to speculate that on many weekends more than 20 percent of the drivers, excluding truckers, who cross the river bridge late at night have been drinking.

The narrow, two-lane river bridge is tough enough to negotiate when one is sober, much less when the senses are impaired by alcohol. The person who insists on drinking and driving across the bridge rather than getting a ride with someone who hasn't been drinking is risking serious injury or death to himself and others.

The Halloween night roadblock proved that the problem of drunken drivers crossing the bridge on weekend nights persists. It is so much of a problem that police should target bridge traffic every weekend through sobriety checkpoints and stops of suspected drunken drivers.

While stricter enforcement may not rid the city of drunken drivers, it will go a long way to help serve warning that those who drink across the river increase their risk of being arrested on their return home.