AFTER SEVERAL SERIOUS CAR ACCIDENTS INVOLVING IMPAIRED DRIVERS, A DESPERATE POLICE FORCE HAS TURNED TO AN OLD TECHNIQUE TO TRY TO CURB THE CARNAGE: THE NAME AND SHAME GAME.
Frustrated police north of Toronto have tried and tried to curb drinking and driving and yet the number of impaired motorists they catch rises every year. Out of desperation over frightful carnage on York Region’s roads, police have turned to one of humanity’s oldest forms of community policing: the name-and-shame game.
York Regional Police joined some other forces this week in a policy change to publicly release the name and age of all motorists criminally charged with impaired driving.
The force shies away from calling it a name-and-shame campaign but accepts that it aims to use humiliation to get compliance.
“The purpose is deterrence,” said Const. Andy Pattenden, a York police spokesman. “We hope that people would be embarrassed to be charged for impaired driving, that they wouldn’t want their employer, their friends, their family knowing about it, because it is an embarrassing thing.
“Does shame come along with it? Absolutely.”
The police reaction in York comes after tragedy.
In 2015, Jennifer Neville-Lake’s three young children and her father were killed when a vehicle driven by a drunk Marco Muzzo slammed into their minivan. The loss unleashed a wave of public anger and grief.
York police expected the intense impact on the community to lead to fewer impaired driving incidents.
“Instead, it’s gone up. Steadily, every year,” said Pattenden, exasperation showing in his voice. He said York officers laid about 1,400 criminal impaired charges so far this year. There were about 1,200 at this point last year and 1,100 the year before. “What is it going to take? “There is nobody in York Region who doesn’t know that drinking and driving is wrong, that’s its dangerous, illegal. And it’s not working.”
The new policy came from the top: “It’s clear that something has to change,” said police Chief Eric Jolliffe; “we are not giving up.”
The policy is to “make impaired driving socially unacceptable” and to allow the community to keep an eye on those on the list and notify police if they choose to drive while under suspension, Jolliffe said.
Several Ontario services are already doing the same, including Halton, Niagara and Durham.
Andrew Murie, the chief executive officer of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, supports the policy change, although he says there are no studies proving it reduces impaired driving.
“It used to be that drinking and driving wasn’t seen as a real crime — ‘anybody could do that and I’m just lucky I’m not one of those’,” said Murie.
“That used to be a problem in the judicial system — a lot of the judges were impaired drivers themselves and so, consequently, were very lenient on impaired drivers. That has totally changed.
“If police tried to do this 15 or 20 years ago, I think there would have been a lot more pushback.”