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Announcement was made Wednesday of the establishment of a drunk driving task force in Kosciusko County and its funding through a state agency.
Five police agencies in Kosciusko County comprise the local task force, which is under the auspices of DUI: Taskforce Indiana. The state task force is overseen by the Governor's Council on Impaired & Dangerous Driving. It went into effect July 1, the same day the state made it illegal for motorists to drive with a blood-alcohol level of .08 percent or greater. The goal of the task force program is to reduce the number of alcohol-related traffic deaths and injuries in Indiana.
Lance Grubbs is the law enforcement liaison for the Governor's Council on Impaired & Dangerous Driving for the northern third of the state. Part of his job is to monitor what police departments do with state grant money, and he will be compiling and releasing the statistics from this program quarterly.
The law enforcement agencies participating in the drunk driving task force are the Kosciusko County Sheriff's Department and the Warsaw, Winona Lake, Syracuse and North Webster police departments. A total of $21,384 has been designated for officers to be paid to work on this task force during their off-duty hours. The funding comes from $1.8 million funneled from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
The five police agencies invited to participate in the task force were chosen because of their efforts in Operation Pullover, an enforcement of seat belt usage and child restraint laws.
These same five agencies lead the county for the number of drunk driving arrests per year. Kosciusko County recorded 396 drunk driving arrests in 1999 and 508 in 2000.
Tom Perzanowski, Syracuse town marshal, is the coordinator of the local task force. Perzanowski said it is important to note that this program is a saturation patrol and not a sobriety checkpoint. Officers working the drunk driving task force will be specifically looking for impaired drivers and, because the program is multi-jurisdictional, it is possible that a North Webster police officer will be patrolling in Winona Lake during his or her assigned task force shift.
Kosciusko County Prosecutor Chuck Waggoner said sworn police officers in the state have jurisdiction throughout Indiana regardless of the agency that employs them. All participating agencies have the approval of their chiefs and/or marshals and town councils to work outside of their jurisdictions.
The task force will operate randomly between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. beginning Oct. 1.
Perzanowski said it is his goal to "get a drunk driver for every eight hours of patrol." He added that he hopes the presence of the additional police officers will cut down not only on the number of accidents, but also the number of drunk drivers on the road.
Statewide, there were 9,065 alcohol-related traffic accident injuries during 2000, according to Grubbs. During that same time period, 67 percent of the alcohol-related traffic deaths occurred in the 24 counties participating in DUI: Taskforce Indiana.
Of the 15 fatal traffic accidents that occurred in Kosciusko County in 1999, three were deemed alcohol-related. Only one of the 14 traffic fatalities in 2000 was attributed to alcohol consumption.
"Hopefully, Kosciusko County will have at least one or two less fatalities because of alcohol-related accidents this year," Grubbs said.
The saturation patrols in Kosciusko County will focus on nine townships, and roadways on which the highest number of alcohol-related accidents have taken place will have intensified police attention.
Perzanowski said the townships involved are four in the northeast portion of the county and the five counties in and surrounding Warsaw.
A statewide public-awareness campaign launched in June forewarned Hoosiers of the increased enforcement, and that effort carries the slogan: "You drink, You drive, You LOSE - .08. It's the Law. Don't Blow It."
During the first month of the task force, Allen, Grant, Hamilton, Lake, Marion, Porter, Steuben, Tippecanoe and Vigo counties conducted saturation patrols that resulted in 312 drunk driving arrests.
