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The Springfield Police Department is making an extra push this week to crack down on drunk drivers. KSMU’s Missy Shelton reports.
This week, the Springfield Police Department is participating in a statewide law enforcement campaign that’s targeting drunk drivers.Faye Barksdale is Traffic Lieutenant with the department. While she says she can’t give specific details about this week’s operations, she explains how these campaigns typically work.
Barksdale says, “Sometimes we conduct sobriety checkpoints. Sometimes we do a saturation patrol. That’s where we take a number of officers and then we saturate an area where we know there will be a lot of intoxicated drivers. It sometimes we do things just as simple as adding patrol on a daily basis. Maybe we would put an extra 2-4 officers on the street who are doing nothing but targeting intoxicated drivers.”
Barksdale encourages drivers to stay off the roads if they’ve been drinking. She says it’s too risky to drive after you’ve had alcohol.
She says, “If you’re going to be drinking, don’t drive. The reason for that is that alcohol remains one of the top causes of fatality and serious injury crashes. Our goal is to take intoxicated drivers off the road and to make travel safer during the holidays because there are more people out there.”
Barksdale says drunk driving is a big safety concern year round but becomes even more of a concern with increased traffic on the roads during the holiday season.