Author: Dan (326 Articles)
The numbers below don’t look like a successful use of the time of 35 police officers. They hassled 1,116 people and only made 6 DUI arrests. The previous year, when they contacted slightly fewer people they made a lot more arrests. It depends on how you define success. If you take it to mean that last years task force had a deterrent value on this year, then perhaps. But if you think of it as an efficient use of government/police money, then perhaps not.
If you put those 35 officers on the road and assigned them to pull over drivers actually doing something wrong on any given night, they would probably net more arrests than did this bunch. Were they making the roads safer? That is questionable. The difficulty with this is how to define success.
Quoted from http://www.yourwestvalley.com/articles/checkpoint_2676___article.html/police_tellef.html:
Peoria: Police report final DUI checkpoint tally | checkpoint, police, tellef : YourWestValley.com
The checkpoint at Lake Pleasant was funded by a grant provided by the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety. There were eight agencies, including Peoria, that participated in the task force. The other agencies were Phoenix, Goodyear, Tolleson, Avondale, Glendale and Surprise police departments and State Liquor Control.
There were more than 35 officers working at the checkpoint.
Tellef said the DUI checkpoints are meant to prevent problems, not to make arrests. The goal was to inform the public that it was happening, Tellef said, and deter people from driving while intoxicated.
Several people who drove through said they knew about the checkpoint beforehand, “even one guy who was arrested,” Tellef said.
Total numbers from all participating agencies
2008 2007
Contacts: 1,116 1,104
DUI: 6 8
Minor consumption: 0 17
