Captain Jason Berry
Government and Media Relations
(360) 596-4010 – office
(360) 596-4015 – fax
http://www.wsp.wa.gov
*** For Immediate Release***
Date:
July 26, 2011
Contact:
Mr. Daniel Coon
Phone:
(360) 596-4012
E-mail:
dan.coon@wsp.wa.gov
International Chiefs Honor State Patrol’s DUI Efforts
- WSP Picked As Top DUI Agency in North America for 2010 -
Olympia --Think the Washington State Patrol is tough on drunk drivers? The nearly 20-thousand DUIs arrested by troopers in 2010 would probably say so.
But now, North America’s police chiefs have made it official.
The International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) has named the Washington State Patrol the continent’s top DUI enforcement agency for 2010.
According to IACP rules, the award recognizes an agency’s “year-round efforts to detect and apprehend impaired drivers and to address impaired driving through policies, officer training, and public information and education.”
State Patrol Chief John Batiste has told front-line troopers they have no higher priority than getting drunks off the road.
“We consider every DUI arrest a potential life saved,” said State Patrol Chief John R. Batiste. “We never know which drunks will kill, but we know with certainty that some of them will.”
“We’re committed to taking all of them off the road.”
This is not the Patrol’s first award from IACP. In 2007, WSP was named the best state police agency of its size. The following year the Patrol won the Championship Category, having competed against the previous years’ first place winners of all agency sizes.
In 2006, now-retired Trooper Kelly Kalmbach was honored as IACP Motorola Trooper of the Year for her conduct during a shooting that left her with career-ending injuries.
WSP continues its push to hold impaired drivers accountable for placing the rest of us at risk.
Police agencies in Washington arrest about 40,000 impaired drivers each year, with the State Patrol accounting for about half that number.
In June, WSP and partner agencies announced interim results of work by the Target Zero Teams in King, Pierce and Snohomish Counties. The multi-agency teams do intense patrols at locations where DUI-related fatal crashes have occurred in the past. Preliminary data indicates that the teams saved 70 lives during the first year of a two-year demonstration project.
On Friday, a new law went into effect that requires the towing of vehicles driven by those arrested for DUI. Pressed by WSP in the 2011 legislature, there is now a mandatory 12-hour hold on those vehicles. The goal is to prevent impaired drivers from returning to their vehicles and driving again.
The award will be officially presented at the annual IACP Conference in October.