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Holidays quiet for cops

The Westlock RCMP, including Traffic Services officers, were kept busy on New Year’s Eve with nine checkstops that checked approximately 320 vehicles. Cpl.

The Westlock RCMP, including Traffic Services officers, were kept busy on New Year’s Eve with nine checkstops that checked approximately 320 vehicles.

Cpl. Dennis Properzi said they had about eight members participating in all nine checkstops, which yielded a single charge of impaired operation of a vehicle.

“They were actually hammering pretty good with checkstops,” indicated Properzi.

Properzi said that when you have a highly visible checkstop, the word gets out and people “do get the hint.”

“I’m not saying checkstops don’t work ... but we’re hoping that the high visibility curbed a lot of what could have been,” he said.

Staff Sgt. Dwayne Rawson said a number of checkstops were done throughout the year by the members of the Integrated Traffic Unit, as well as town and county members.

There was also a “candy cane” checkstop put on by the Westlock Fire Department, which he said is fun way of passing out the message to not to drink and drive.

Rawson said he thinks people are generally getting the message not to drink and drive.

The Traffic Safety Act gives peace officers the ability to hand out a 72-hour suspension when they have reasonable grounds to suspect impairment and the individual has a blood alcohol level in excess 0.05.

With members out there more, and the fines are pretty steep and the consequences are pretty stiff, so you do have more people paying attention to it,” he said. “However you still have your hardcores out there who just fail to follow the direction and don’t think of other people.”

Throughout the entirety of 2014, Properzi said the detachment handed out approximately 30 impaired driving charges where the matter actually went to court.

Properzi said they also handed out roughly 25 72-hour suspensions.

The Traffic Safety Act gives peace officers the ability to hand out a 72-hour suspension when they have reasonable grounds to suspect impairment and the individual has a blood alcohol level above 0.05.

Otherwise, the Christmas holidays were uneventful for local RCMP.

“It was a pretty quiet holiday week, which was nice,” indicated Properzi.

Amusingly, Properzi worked on New Year’s Day and he ended up handing out a 72-hour suspension when a man came into the RCMP detachment on an unrelated matter.

Properzi said the individual did blow in excess of 80 milligrams, or 0.08, but they didn’t actually catch him driving, so a lesser penalty was warranted.

“We did the proactive thing and got him off the road. But no, that doesn’t happen every day,” he said.


Kevin Berger

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