'Booze It & Lose It' Yields 1,137 DWI Arrests in Second Week, 6,469 seat belt violations

releases.usnewswire.com ^

[chance33_98]

'Booze It & Lose It' Yields 1,137 DWI Arrests in Second Week; Lawler Family to Recall Kill Devil Hills Tragedy at Outer Banks Event

7/9/03 5:00:00 PM

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To: Assignment Desk, Daybook Editor

Contact: Jill Warren Lucas of the Governor's Highway Safety Program, 919-733-3083, (cell: 919-291-6729), jwlucas@dot.state.nc.us

News Advisory:

What:

"Booze It & Lose It" Press Event

When:

10:30 a.m. Thursday, July 10

Where:

Wright Brothers National Memorial, Kill Devil Hills

A Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer's patrol car was damaged in a hit-and-run crash caused by an impaired driver following a "Booze It & Lose It" enforcement event.

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg officer's new, unmarked patrol car was struck minutes after a July 4 drunken driving checkpoint with one of the state's breath-alcohol testing mobile units, better known as BATMobiles, had ended. A female driver hit his vehicle and fled the scene but was soon apprehended. Her breath-alcohol content (BAC) measured .12. She was arrested for DWI, hit and run, and no operator's license. No one was injured.

Statewide, law enforcement officers arrested a total of 1,137 motorists for driving while impaired (DWI) during the second week of the summer "Booze It & Lose It" campaign. That includes 115 impaired drivers under the legal drinking age of 21. Since the campaign began on June 26, a total of 1,907 DWI arrests have been made.

The Week 2 arrests are a result of 1,994 checkpoints and stepped-up patrols conducted statewide between June 30-July 6. Counties with the highest number of DWI citations include Wake (96), Cumberland (80), Mecklenburg (46).

In addition to cracking down on impaired drivers, officers last week issued 3,920 seat belt and 619 child passenger safety violations. They discovered a total of 32,310 traffic and criminal violations, including 366 drug charges, 36 firearm violations, and 24 fugitives from justice. They also recovered 18 stolen vehicles.

A final "Booze It & Lose It" press event will be held at 10:30 a.m. Thursday at the Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kill Devil Hills. Nags Head, Kill Devil Hills and Kitty Hawk are ranked Nos. 1-2-3 for their high rates of DWI incidents in North Carolina cities with populations of less than 10,000.

Speakers will include GHSP Acting Director Don Nail, Kitty Hawk Police Chief Bob Morris, and Erin and Jessica Lawler of Kill Devil Hills. Their 17-year-old sister Shana was one of four teens killed in the infamous April 1999 Kills Devil Hills crash. In case of inclement weather, the event will be held at Kill Devil Hills Town Council, Colington Road. BATMobile checkpoints will follow that evening in Nags Head and Kill Devil Hills.

"Booze It & Lose It" continues through Sunday, July 13. See Statewide Citation Report below. A final statewide tally will be released on July 16.

STATEWIDE TOTALS

Total Checkpoints and Patrols June 23-29........1,014 June 30-July 6....1,994

DWI -- Driving While Impaired Violations

June 23-29..........770 June 30-July 6....1,137 TOTAL.............1,907

Occupant Restraint

-- Seat Belt Violations June 23-29........2,549 June 30-July 6....3,920 TOTAL.............6,469

-- Child Passenger Safety Violations June 23-29..........346 June 30-July 6......619 TOTAL...............965

Traffic Violations

-- Speeding June 23-29........6,013 June 30-July 6...11,188 TOTAL............17,201

-- Total Traffic Violations June 23-29.......17,547 June 30-July 6...31,123 TOTAL............48,670

Criminal Violations

-- Drug Violations June 23-29..........276 June 30-July 6......366 TOTAL...............642

-- Firearm Violations June 23-29...........14 June 30-July 6.......36 TOTAL................50

-- Stolen Vehicles Recovered (note) June 23-29...........10 June 30-July 6.......18 TOTAL................28

-- Fugitives Arrested (note) June 23-29...........13 June 30-July 6.......24 TOTAL................37

-- Other Criminal Violations Not Listed June 23-29..........325 June 30-July 6......785 TOTAL.............1,110

-- Total Criminal Violations June 23-29..........615 June 30-July 6....1,187 TOTAL.............1,802

Total Traffic & Criminal Violations

June 23-29.......18,162 June 30-July 6...32,310 TOTAL............50,472

Note: These columns are not counted into overall total of violations.

-- BATMobile checkpoints are scheduled for Thursday in Kill Devil Hills, Nags Head, Greenville, Goldsboro and Fayetteville. Friday's events are planned for Rocky Mount, Wilmington, Graham, Elizabeth City and Red Springs. Checkpoints are planned for Saturday in Wilson, Leland, Greensboro, Ahoskie and Shelby.

-- Call local law enforcement agencies to learn more about their "Booze It & Lose It" activities.

For a schedule of "Booze It & Lose It" BATMobile checkpoints, or for a list of the DWI rankings by city, call GHSP Public Information Officer Jill Warren Lucas at 919-733-3083 (cell: 919-291-6729), or visit GHSP's Web site at: http://www.ncdot.org/secretary/ghsp

[Helms]

Let it go, "dead" has a rather Imus-like tempermant, why, I do not know. Perhaps his moniker is a warning, similar to the pirate ships of old.

[dljordan]

We need to get those damn set belt criminals off the road. I suppose the next thing will be for Officer (I was only doing my job) Friendly is to confiscate the cars of these civilian scum. How much did these revenue agents earn I wonder.

[DoughtyOne]

Yep, that bothers me too.

[Unknowing]

Oh, I agree that the cost would come out of the restaurateurs' pockets, and having to hire a car would also reduce our fun and freedom. That's the sad point: since the People are willing to accept these roadblock traps, and even demand them as part of what you've called "nanny state" social regulations, we're stuck with them. The risks of carrying on as reasonably prudent free people have become too great in certain ways, it may seem.

All conduct is becoming, de facto, subject to strict liability with the growth of social regulation. The standard of care required to avoid various legal traps is becoming superlative, so that refraining from many actions becomes the more prudent choice. If one exercising ordinary reasonable care cannot be "careful enough," according to the law, to avoid the sanctions of the law, then any reasonable person will restrict his activities.

Social regulation undermines and curtails the American presumption of liberty, by my lights. I mean the baseline assumption that individual willpower should be trusted, fostered, and let alone by the agents of the state unless probable cause exists to interfere. That philosophy is so lost and gone from our law, though I appreciate the fact that liberty lives on within FreeRepublic.

[Dr Warmoose]

So I went to cato.org to see the write-up on the book you recommended

In the book, Boaz traces the history of libertarian thought, producing a concise yet thorough treatment of the subject. He then goes on to discuss why libertarianism is morally just...

Here is the fundamental flaw in Libertarianism spelled out in cato.org's own assesment. They talk about "morally just" but consider their views on shooting up drugs, prostitution, religion free America, wide-open borders, homosexual "marriages" and abortion-on-demand, as moral. Since the term "moral" now has been hijacked to mean "whatever I want to do, restricted by only my personal judgments and inhibitions" this doesn't sound like "morality" it sounds like "flexible values". Since "morality" by definition comes from an immutable, absolute source, I find nothing within their concept of morality - particularly since many devoteés of Libertarianism are outright hostile to anything Christian, which observes a code of law five thousand years old.