Nassau, Suffolk plan holiday DWI crackdown
To emphasize the stepped-up enforcement of drunken-driving laws on Nassau roads, County Executive Edward Mangano drove to a DWI news conference Friday in a police car. Its rear half was painted taxicab yellow, and on the side was the slogan: "Choose your ride, don't drink and drive."
"This demonstrates your choices if you go out drinking," he said after exiting the car in the parking lot of police headquarters in Mineola. "You can be booked, processed and prosecuted, or you can plan ahead and have a designated driver or take a cab home."
In Suffolk, Police Commissioner Richard Dormer said Wednesday that there will be a "comprehensive boating and driving while intoxicated crackdown plan" for the weekend that will include using police helicopters "to spot potential DWI offenders from the air."
Mangano said his marine bureau will participate in perimeter patrols Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Bethpage Air Show at Jones Beach.
"We will maintain high-visibility patrols that will investigate any suspicious activity, including unlawful operation of a boat," Mangano said.
Nassau had 93 drunken-driving arrests over the 2010 Memorial Day weekend, compared to 3,675 for the the entire year. There have been 1,250 of them so far this year, Mangano said.
"In 2010, 29 people lost their lives as a result of DWI," he said, adding there were numerous other serious injuries resulting from drunken driving.
Comparable numbers for Suffolk were not immediately available.
Among those attending Mangano's event was Marge Lee, who heads the group Drive Educated Drive Informed Commit And Totally End Drunk Driving, or DEDICATEDD. In July 1990, Lee survived a head-on collision with a drunken driver that killed her 25-year-old son and injured two of her younger children.
Lee showed two enlarged pictures of smashed vehicles -- her family's and the car of the drunken driver. "These are my pictures of summers past, don't let them be yours, she said. "Kenny died because someone else made a stupid, inconsiderate choice."
Brian Rosenberg, who owns a restaurant in Carle Place and who heads Restaurants Against Drunk Driving, announced that he and the owners of the more than 100 restaurants have begun training their automobile valets and other workers to recognize drunken driving and to alert someone to stop that person from driving.
Posted Friday, May 27, 2011
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