Where are they…

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 25/04/2015 (3813 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Ever wonder why police don’t have check-stops, or something like it, the whole year round?

I mean, given the obvious danger of drunk driving, and how seriously the justice system deals with impaired drivers.

When, or if, they can catch them.

 

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It was an early Saturday morning two weeks ago — around the hour bars are closing and extra “happy” motorists are hitting our streets. And others, like Corey and Leanne Janzen, were hitting the pillows.

In fact, the young West End couple was asleep when Leanne was awakened by a loud crash.

When Corey went out on the street to investigate, he found a car driven by a young woman had just smacked into his neighbour’s parked truck and glanced off the Janzen family’s van.

Corey said he smelled booze on the driver’s breath, watched her fumble through her wallet for ID and overheard her telling a female passenger she was going to go to jail when police arrived.

But police didn’t arrive. At least not in time.

According to a timeline provided by the Winnipeg Police Service, it would take police an hour and 40 minutes after Corey’s initial 911 call to find a free cruiser to dispatch.

By that time, at 3:26 a.m., the suspect had been gone an hour, having finally driven off in her damaged car.

The car wouldn’t get far.

Just over half an hour after arriving on the scene, police found the car abandoned on a nearby street.

But they couldn’t locate the driver.

No driver, no breathalyser, no charge.

Police had already explained it was a busy night, and there were no cruiser cars immediately available, but Leanne was angry enough about the lack of a timely response she emailed the Free Press.

Later, I contacted Supt. Bill Fogg, who is in charge of the patrol division, and he phoned Corey.

If the police service wasn’t embarrassed, it was at least apologetic.

“When I spoke to Mr. Janzen,” Supt. Fogg told me later in an email, “I explained the circumstances and apologized for the poor response he and his wife had received. Unfortunately, there are times when the volume of calls for service exhaust our resource supply and wait times are unacceptably long.

“That is why we use a detailed priority system; so that we direct resources to those calls which pose the greatest danger to the public. An impaired driver sitting in her vehicle poses a significant public risk and the priority was assigned accordingly; unfortunately, we were forced to respond to even more dangerous circumstances for more than 1½ hours.”

Fogg was, and is, one of the most helpful and transparent police officers with whom I’ve ever dealt.

But when I asked for a more detailed explanation, the extent of those “even more dangerous circumstances” weren’t clear.

When Corey called 911, there were 125 calls waiting city-wide, but of those there were no Priority 1 levels.

And only 28 were either Priority 2 or 3. Corey’s call was entered — appropriately in Fogg’s view and probably by definition — as a Priority 3.

But, as Fogg acknowledges, not all Priority 3 calls are of equal importance.

Could Corey’s call have been moved up in time? I don’t know, and I’m not in a position to judge that.

Anyone who has been triaged in a hospital emergency ward and watched ambulances arrive with more serious cases can appreciate the police priority system and what Fogg suggests about there being only so many cars available to handle so many calls for service.

But it’s those numbers of cars, and how the shifts are structured, that gives Corey’s story added importance.

Each shift is allotted 27 cars.

But there is an overlap shift, when evening meets night and there are 54 cars on the road during the busiest time of the 24-hour cycle, between around 4:30 p.m. and 2:30 a.m.

At which point the night shift is basically on its own to police the city.

So, just when the likelihood of drunks hitting the road spikes after last call, the police service’s ability to respond to calls such as the Janzen’s is sliced in half.

From 54 to 27 cars.

“I wish we could do more,” Fogg told me at one point in our back-and-forth email discussion about police resources versus public demand.

Maybe the police service can.

In theory, at least, it could realign the shifts, so more cars are routinely on the road until 4 a.m.

Or have the traffic division work into the night.

Or what about extending check-stop programs year around? Heck, there has to be enough volunteers in this city to run Operation Red Nose 365 days a year.

It could save lives.

And save police the embarrassment of another suspected drunk driver who wouldn’t wait around for a cruiser to finally arrive.

gordon.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca