LIMA — For the habitual impaired driver, the Old Barn Out Back consisted of a crowd that would be their worst nightmare Tuesday.
Mothers Against Drunk Driving of Allen, Hardin and Putnam counties held their annual Top Cop Banquet at the Lima restaurant. The annual banquet awards officers for their focus on removing impaired drivers off the streets.
“I was with my daughter and granddaughters in a hospital, so we know what it is like to be impacted by an impaired driver,” said MADD Community Action Team Coordinator Pam Styer. “We thank you so much.”
Officers with the most OVI arrests from the Ada, Columbus Grove, Lepisc, Lima, Ottawa, Perry Township and Shawnee Township police departments, as well as officers from the Allen and Putnam County sheriff’s offices and the Lima post of the Ohio State Highway Patrol were all awarded during the ceremony. Trooper Gerald Manley from the State Patrol made an amazing 83 arrests in 2015.
“Removing impaired drivers from the road is one of the top issues for the highway patrol,” Manley said. “Because of our duties, our office is more conformed for making these types of arrests.”
Manley said while people typically view an OVI as drunken driving, the department is seeing an increased number of OVI cases involving heroin, marijuana or prescription drug use. In cases such as heroin or prescription drug use, it may be harder because of the lack of an odor. However, they can evaluate based on other evidence.
“They usually will exhibit other signs that we can notice,” Manley said. “We can give them field sobriety tests.”
Ohio MADD chairman John DiPietro said it is impossible to measure the number of lives these and other officers save by grabbing OVI offenders.
“You can’t put numbers on this at all,” DiPietro said. “I know a woman who lost someone in an OVI accident. She says ‘I wish there had been a DUI checkpoint the night my son died.’”
Ohio MADD Executive Director Doug Scoles said it is the goal of the organization to completely eliminate impaired driving.
“We launched a campaign to completely eliminate it in 2006,” Scoles said. “There were about 300 people killed last year and more than 6,000 injured. A lot of those were lifelong injuries. We need to support highly visible law enforcement because they are out there taking drunk drivers off of the road.”
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