Metro to conduct 5 DUI checkpoints on holiday weekend

By Erin Dostal

Published Thursday, May 27, 2010 | 9:32 a.m.

Updated Thursday, May 27, 2010 | 1:26 p.m.

Metro Police said Thursday the agency will host the country's largest anti-DUI event during Memorial Day weekend. It will include five sobriety checkpoints and officers patrolling high-risk areas.

The event, paid for by a grant from the Goshen Community Development Coalition, is an effort to reduce alcohol-related crashes during the weekend.

Each checkpoint will include three Metro Police vans equipped with devices that determine whether a driver is impaired, Lt. Christopher Ankeny of Metro’s Traffic Bureau said at a news conference Thursday. Phlebotomists will also be on hand to test blood alcohol levels, he said.

“DUI is a crime, not an accident,” he said.

About 250 officers and civilians will be assigned to the checkpoints, officials said. Sandy Heverely, of Stop DUI, a local advocacy group, called it a “huge event” for her group.

“We are truly, truly grateful for the events that are going to be happening,” she said.

Joan Eddowes, whose son died in a drunk-driving incident, she said she was hopeful the weekend’s events would get impaired drivers off Southern Nevada roads.

Her son, Mark, was 19 when he became the first local fatality of Memorial Day weekend in 1991. He died at University Medical Center after he was hit by a drunk driver. Mark was riding his bicycle, and the accident “literally tore his body to pieces,” his mother said.

“It gives me pleasure to talk about my son,” she said. “He was my life. He was my future.”

Eddowes said she told her only son she loved him that morning as he left. That was the last time she saw him.

A neighborhood child came to her door later that day and told her Mark had been hurt in a car accident.

“I didn’t get to see my son,” at the hospital, she said. “There wasn’t anything they could do to save him.”

Eddowes said she hopes drivers will act responsibly during Memorial Day weekend so no one else will have to endure the loss she did.

Memorial Day weekend typically has the second-highest number of DUI arrests for a holiday. The highest number occurs during the New Year's holiday, Metro officials said.

Ankeny said three people have died so far this year in alcohol-related crashes in Metro's jurisdiction. That's down from 11 at this time last year.

Ankeny attributed the decrease to stepped-up efforts to catch drunk drivers, including monthly checkpoints and efforts to work with other local police departments throughout the valley.

This weekend's checkpoints will be active from 7 p.m. to 3 a.m. The locations will be at Flamingo Road and Hospitality Circle beginning Friday; Boulder Highway and Desert Inn Road beginning Saturday; and Charleston Boulevard and Decatur Boulevard beginning Saturday.

Monday will include two checkpoints, one at Boulder Highway and Flamingo Road, and another at Boulder Highway and Desert Inn Road.

In addition to annoucing the weekend’s checkpoints, Ankeny discussed Metro’s new policy of seizing vehicles of drivers with a felony DUI.

For a car to be seized, the driver must have had two or more DUIs during the past seven years, said Metro spokeswoman Barbara Morgan. The seizure would happen after the person’s third drunk-driving offense and the car would be impounded, as is normally done, after the DUI traffic stop. Then, the department will file papers to seize the vehicle, she said.

“We will remove that vehicle – that weapon – from the roadway,” he said.