State aims to crack down on holiday DUIs
Campaign includes 71 sobriety checkpoints, but just one locally
Roughly 145 law enforcement agencies around Virginia are participating in a statewide campaign to stop drunk driving this holiday season.
Authorities will set up 71 sobriety checkpoints around the state, in addition to 645 “saturation” patrols — made up of police officers and sheriff ’s deputies working solely on DUI-enforcement — according to Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s office.
“Tragedies from drunk driving are 100% avoidable, yet year after year families and friends mourn the loss of their loved ones due to this negligent behavior,” Youngkin said in a statement. “We’re asking everyone to help our efforts by planning a safe ride home if they’ve been drinking.”
It’s a Class 1 misdemeanor — punishable by up to a year in jail — to drive with a blood alcohol content of .08 or above in Virginia. A second DUI within five years mandates jail time, while a third is a felony.
The public safety campaign — “Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over” — combines TV and radio spots with a “highly visible” law enforcement patrols to crack down on driving under the influence.
“Their specific deployment is to look for impaired drivers, and nothing else,” said Kurt Erickson, a president for the non-profit organization that runs the campaign’s advertisements and public awareness efforts. “They’re targeting high risk areas. They’re targeting specific times and so forth. And you will see more of those.”
The non-profit, the Washington Regional Alcohol Program, has received grants from the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles under the program for 21 years. They are about $1 million annually.
But Hampton Roads law enforcement agencies aren’t conducting as many patrols under the program as their counterparts around the state, according to numbers the DMV provided to Erickson.
Northern Virginia agencies are running 104 patrols, and four sobriety checkpoints, he said. Richmond area agencies are doing 119 patrols and 25 checkpoints. Agencies in the Harrisonburg area are doing 127 patrols and five sobriety checkpoints. Southwest Virginia agencies are conducting 150 patrols and 21 sobriety checkpoints. And in the Roanoke area, agencies are running 96 patrols and 15 sobriety checkpoints.
But locally, though 23 local law enforcement agencies are taking part in the initiative, they are conducting only 57 focused DUI patrols. Moreover, there’s only one sobriety checkpoint planned.
That means that Hampton Roads — with 21% of the state’s population — is conducting only 9% of the state’s DUI patrols and fewer than 2% of the state’s sobriety checkpoints under the initiative.
Norfolk Police Chief Mark Talbot said his department is looking at enforcement more broadly.
“Our focus will be making sure that we have resources in the right places to reduce the possibility of violence,” Talbot said. “We will also be paying attention to traffic safety more broadly. … (DUI) wouldn’t be the thing that I would be focusing our attention on exclusively. That’s not to minimize the problem. It’s simply we have a range of things that we’re paying attention to.”
“Hopefully our traffic enforcement is structured in a such a way where we understand where we’ve had issues with driving under the influence in our cities,” he said, saying he looks at trends and patterns rather than “broader campaigns.”
But at least one local department said it will be doing DUI crackdowns separate from the “Drive Sober” program.
Matt Michalec, a Newport News Police Department spokesman, said that department has been doing weekly DUI enforcement through a separate DMV grant that provides overtime money for the officers involved. Though that’s typically Thursday evenings through Sunday mornings, he said, the schedule can be adjusted for the holidays.
That’s happening this year, he said. The special DUI patrols will run through Christmas Eve rather than ending Sunday morning, Michalec said. The DUI patrols will also include New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day rather than ending earlier that Sunday.
The program won’t include Monday, Michalec said, but “we always have an increased patrol presence on Christmas Day every year separate from the grant initiative.” Those patrol officers, he said, can still make DUI arrests.
There were 782 alcohol-fueled car crashes in Virginia in the 2022 holiday season — between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, the governor’s office said. There were 23 fatalities in those crashes, up from 13 in the same period the year before.
For the year as a whole, there were 6,910 alcohol-related crashes across Virginia in 2022, up 2% from the year before, according to the DMV numbers. That led to more than 4,000 people injured and 274 killed.
Hampton Roads had 1,511 alcohol-related crashes in 2022, down 8% from 2021, according to the numbers. More than 1,000 people were injured and 56 were killed.
More than 90% of those killed in DUIs are male, with men between 21 and 35 having the highest DUI rates, according to the governor’s office. A recent survey found that 63% of men admit to driving after having a few drinks or getting into a car with a driver who’s been drinking.
The public awareness efforts include TV, radio and social media posts.
Peter Dujardin, 757-897-2062, pdujardin@dailypress.com