Thursday, August 30, 2007
County and city law enforcement officers will heighten patrol over the Labor Day weekend as more people are on the roads.
The Douglas County Sheriff’s Department and the Lawrence Police Department will have lanes to check for impaired drivers tonight from 11 p.m. until 2 a.m. Lawrence police will also do Saturation Patrol today from 5 p.m. until 10:30 p.m.
“The thing people need to realize is that we will be arresting those people driving that are impaired,” said Lt. John Eichkorn of the Kansas Highway Patrol.
Lawrence, Douglas County and Kansas Highway Patrol are also all participating in the Special Traffic Enforcement Program (STEP) that pays for officers to work overtime. The work will be continuing all weekend as well. Douglas County will be facilitating STEP today from 7:30 p.m. until 10:30 p.m., meaning that more officers will be on patrol during that time.
“We will be joining with other law enforcement participants and really looking for that impaired driver, because there will be those people who have not listened to our precautions,” Eichkorn said.
Eichkorn said in Kansas there were seven deaths over the Labor Day weekend in 2006 from six fatal car crashes, while in an average weekend in 2006 there were four fatal crashes. Captain Tim Hull, the director of the public information and education division of the Missouri Highway Patrol, said there were 18 people killed in Missouri over Labor Day weekend last year from various causes.
“It seems because of the high volume of traffic, and because a lot of people do make plans for the weekend, there is a higher propensity for wrecks to happen,” said Lt. Kari Wempe, the Public/Policy Information Officer for the Douglas County Sheriff’s Department.
For students traveling through Missouri this weekend, Hull said they will be making use of every officer and putting every officer they can on the road during the travelling period, including vacation areas such as the Ozarks.
“Officers will be in that area and focused on major highways and the back ways to get there,” Hull said. “They’ll be looking for everything, including speeding and those under the influence of drugs or alcohol.”
Eichkorn said their goal is to do what they can to reduce the number of wrecks they saw last year.
“It’s imperative for our people to plan for this weekend, because there is a whole new group of 21-year-olds out there who may consider drinking at these celebrations and then getting on the road,” Eichkorn said.
—Edited by Jeff Briscoe
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