July impaired charges spike with added focus

By Jeremy Appel on August 2, 2018.

jappel@medicinehatnews.com @MHNJeremyAppel

Medicine Hat Police Service arrested a total of 31 impaired drivers in July, two who were involved in minor collisions.

The July figure is 26 per cent of the total for all of 2017.

MHPS Sgt. Clarke White says this sharp increase is linked to enhanced enforcement efforts, although he acknowledges it’s difficult to determine a specific cause.

“It’s hard to say, and I’m not sure I can really attribute it to anything, other than we did increase our enforcement of it,” he said.

The police focused its traffic enforcement for July on impaired driving, White added.

They had three large-scale organized checkstops set up throughout the months, which White said “tend to accumulate numbers in terms of impaired driving and other kinds of suspensions.”

Surprisingly, the check stop during Stampede weekend didn’t result in any arrests.

“We didn’t get any, which is fantastic,” he said. “It’s kind of what we hope for.”

In July 2017, there were only nine impaired driving charges, which White said is par for the course, particularly after the beefing up of impaired driving laws in 2012.

The year with the highest number of impaired driving charges on record is 2011, with 450. By 2017, the city was down to 119.

There have been 94 charges so far in 2018, White said.

After 2012, impaired drivers have had immediate, indefinite suspensions of their licences and longer seizures of their vehicles.

“We’re going to be trending back upwards for the first time since the laws came into effect,” said White.

“We would expect based on our numbers so far this year that they’re going to go up.”

If you see a driver you suspect is impaired, you call 911.

“That is an emergency situation if you actively watch an impaired driver, because tragedy can strike very quickly when somebody’s operating impaired,” White said.

18
-17