City police happy with low holiday impaired numbers

The Weyburn Police Service is happy with the quiet holiday period and with the relatively low numbers of arrests for impaired driving over the Christmas and New Year's holidays.

The city police held two high-profile traffic blitzes with the RCMP, on Dec. 15 and 17, and in addition, have held a number of "Operation Overdrive" stop-checks through the holiday season, said acting police chief Russ Chartrand.

With the two blitzes held jointly with the RCMP, there were high numbers of vehicles stopped and no impaired driving charges were laid in either one.

Chartrand explained, "They're very high profile; you stop lots of vehicles and your presence is made clear. Because you're so visible, the numbers of charges is usually minimal. We did a number of other Operation Overdrive stop-checks where we brought in extra people."

"Generally speaking, we're happy with the public, as there wasn't a lot of offences. The number of charges was quite low in comparison," he added.

Chartrand noted both Christmas and New Year's fell on weekends, and the number of calls to the Weyburn Police Service weren't any higher than for other weekends.
"It really wasn't extraordinarily busy," he said.

Without having actual statistical figures to refer to, he said his impression is that crime and drunk driving hasn't increased at the same rate as it had in the past couple of years.

With that said, Chartrand acknowledged that with the increase in business and population comes an increase in traffic and with problems in the community.

"The southeast is a bright spot in Canada, economically, and as a result everyone in the city is busier. It's all relative to the numbers of the population, and consequently there are more issues to deal with," said the acting chief.