Lethbridge police arrested 13 suspected impaired drivers this holiday season and Sgt. Wade Davidson isn’t happy about it.
“That’s disturbingly up over the eight charges we laid last year,” Davidson said.
In previous years, Davidson says his team would usually set up on major arterial roads but thanks to social media apps such as Twitter and Facebook, checkstop locations spread fast.
“When we’re setting up a checkstop on a major roadway, people know where we are by the time we’ve completed the set up,” he said.
Davidson says 2016 checkstop tactics included hiding on the quieter roads.
“Unfortunately, we found that we were apprehending more impaired drivers doing that.”
While Lethbridge police were busy catching impaired drivers in the city, RCMP had a much quieter holiday season, making just two arrests between mid-December and the new year.
“I like to think maybe our presence on the highways would be a deterrent,” Staff Sgt. Glenn Henry said. “It’s really hard to tell, but I’m very pleased this year that we didn’t have a lot of charges.”
Henry added that just because the holiday season is over, it doesn’t mean police put a halt to the hunt for impaired drivers.
“If people have that idea then they do that at their own risk. Our RCMP members are always out on the highways 24 hours a day and we gets lots of help from the public with complaints and we follow up on every complaint.”
Davidson echoed that sentiment, but adds taking drugs and driving is just as bad as consuming alcohol before getting behind the wheel. In December, police responded to a roadside medical emergency and the driver turned out to have overdosed on fentanyl.
“This type of situation is extremely dangerous so please not only don’t drink and drive but don’t take drugs and drive either,” Davidson said.
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