 Custom Search  How Many Photo Tickets Will It Take Before You Fight Back? GPS is 100% Legal and Pays For Itself. Click Here To Learn More. Winnipeg Police Traffic Resources At All Time LowFeb. 19 2009Could police run Checkstop program all year?
Now police want to take the program beyond the month of December and run more programs all year round. The initiative seems to be a knee jerk reaction to the sentencing last month of 20-year-old Steve Watkins, the man who killed Tow Truck operator Amanda Frizzley. Watkins received a 30-month jail term for the Crime, his blood alcohol level was two-and-a-half times the legal limit. In the months that followed, there was thought about whether a full-time Checkstop program might have caught the man who hit her that early Sunday morning. "I just don't know where the whole answer lies," says Craig Frizzley, Amanda's father Neither does Patrol Sgt. Damian Turner. "There's a huge number of people driving while under the influence of alcohol. Just by our sheer numbers we're not able to detect or to come in contact with them," explains Turner. Turner is a Patrol Sgt. with the Traffic Unit at the Winnipeg Police Service and is committed to reducing the number of impaired drivers on Winnipeg streets. Currently the Checkstop program runs traditionally for the month of December, and on a few long weekends in partnership with Manitoba Public Insurance. "It becomes something you realize is 100% preventable and if we dedicated the proper resources and the proper time and training we'd be able to make a huge dent in the problem," he says. Turner would like to see a full-time impaired driving unit, perhaps working four-days-a-week. He says it is nearly impossible to plan for when the chief is not giving the Traffic Unit any extra manpower or money. Herein lies the Problem and Turner should be commended for standing up and pointing out that it's great to talk the talk, but without proper manpower and dedicated enforcement time the reality will end up being 'status quo'. The police chief has asked Turner to figure out how to get the Checkstop van on the road throughout the year. "If we can redeploy at certain times, the best bang for the buck, that might be what he's going to come up with, and I suspect that's probably what it's going to be. I think we have to look at our current resources, how we can do it better," explains Chief Keith McCaskill. Damian Turner believes strongly the Winnipeg Police Service can play a greater role in reducing impaired driving in the city. He only wishes he had more to work with. "I utilize the resources that are given to me and do the best with that, so that's what I'm juggling right now," says Turner. Each shift requires at least 10 officers and a supervisor, all of whom are temporarily re-deployed from other districts. The majority do not have any special training to detect impaired drivers. Turner says there have been times when no one on shift knew how to use the breathalyzer. This is a sad state of affairs for the Traffic Division which was functioning at full capacity up till 1999/2000 when the Service started it dissection of the unit. It's interesting to point out that the City's Statistics show that in 99 there was over 1200 impaired arrests and close to 50,000 tickets for a variety of offences issued by officers. In the 2007 Annual Report it showed that impaired arrests were down to around 500 and tickets had been slashed in half to around 24,000. The end of 2007 saw the complete removal of Divisional Traffic units who were responsible for local enforcement, responding to Collisions and dealing with impaired drivers. There is now approx. 24 Traffic officers left for the entire city and the majority are assigned to hit and run and fatal collision investigations.
This practice caused tickets to plummet because an officer would go out for a few months and issue tickets and then subpoenas would start coming in and then they would spend more time off the road then on it until subpoenas ran dry and then the cycle would start over again. At the same time, the City was jointly involved with MPI in sponsoring an Impaired Driving initiative that allowed Traffic officers a whole summer season to devote time to impaired drivers. This made an incredible difference and it was not uncommon for a 2 man car to arrest 2-5 impaired drivers in an evening. When you consider there were usually 4-8 units involved per evening that resulted in some nights over 20 impaired arrests and several 24 hour suspensions. However the following year there was internal bickering between the service and MPI and funding from was cut back. There was direction from MPI that since they were paying a large chunk of the bill that they could dictate how the program was run and wanted officers to concentrate less on Enforcement and more on doing visible check stop set ups. The police of course found this ridiculous because line ups result in very few impaired drivers being caught. Let's face it, if you want to catch an impaired driver, you park near bars and pull vehicle over in clear view of the Bar. There is nothing more convincing to the potential impaired driver to call a cab then to come out of the Bar and see someone under arrest and having their vehicle impounded. The statistics don't lie. The Police Service has instead opted to lean on the Photo Enforcement System to generate tickets and revenue and have completely ignored their obligation to insuring that Winnipeg has 'Safer Streets' Larry Stefanuik The penalties for impaired driving under the Canadian Criminal Code. For a first offence, the minimum fine increased from $600 to $1000. For a second offence, the minimum jail sentence increased from 14 to 30-days. For a third offence, the minimum jail sentence increased from 90 to 120-days. Each offence also carries a prohibition from driving for one-year up to three-years.
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