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More DUIs? La Salle County headed to a one-third increase · Illinois Valley - Shaw Local

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  Speaker 1: More DUIs. LaSalle County headed to a one third increase.
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  Written by Tom Collins, this article is being read by
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  an automated voice brought to you by Everlet. Dave Khalil
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  has been practicing law for more than forty years and
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  thought he'd seen it all. But this year, the Mendota
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  defense attorney noticed something new. Motorists are dropping the dime
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  on DUI suspects. Khalil noticed that his pass past three
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  clients were arrested not because the police saw them weaving
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  across the fog line. Instead, it was other drivers with
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  cell phones who spotted his clients driving erratically and then
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  called the cops. For some reason, citizens are more frequently
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  reporting erratic driving by calling nine hundred and eleven, said Khalil,
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  whose overall traffic caseload is up. I am not sure
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  of the mechanism to why there's more reporting, but perhaps
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  people are just being more safety conscious. Khalil isn't the
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  only one seeing more drunk driving arrests. LaSalle County recently
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  notched its two hundredth DUI arrest, a figure that wasn't
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  reached last year until late July. If the boom continues,
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  the county is headed for a thirty percent increase in
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  DUIs this year. Police and local attorneys shared their observations
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  on the current spate of drunk driving arrests and why
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  the yearly total could see an increase of one third.
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  Yauth Movement has previously reported the Safety Act and the
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  George Floyd killing led to turnover at police departments and
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  an exodus of experienced police officers. In their place arrived
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  recruits with less less experience in spotting impaired drivers. One
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  local police chief thinks arrests may have risen because young
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  cops are getting their sea legs. We had a lot
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  of new younger officers enter the workforce, observed Mendota Police
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  Chief Jason Martin. I wonder if the officers are getting
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  more comfortable handling, detecting, and arresting DUI offenders. Police and
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  attorneys interviewed for this story also agreed that rookie cops
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  are less likely to give an impaired motorist a break.
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  Special patrols LaSalle Countown deputies nabbed two drunk drivers during
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  around Saint Patrick's Day, which wouldn't have been remarkable except
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  that the arrests happened during a holiday enforcement campaign funded
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  by the state. Sheriff Adam Diss announced the two arrests
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  at the conclusion of a statewide initiative funded by Federal
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  Highway Safety Funds administered by the Illinois Department of Transportation.
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  We may only catch one or two, allowed Lieutenant John
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  Dyke of the Sheriff's office. Nevertheless, even a handful of
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  arrests can pad a county's running total by a critical
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  percentage point, not close to a record. The county is
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  on pace for four hundred and fifty one drunk driving arrests,
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  according to a Shaw local projection, which would represent a
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  seven year high. Except for twenty twenty one, when the
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  count notched four to seventeen arrests, the yearly total has
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  fallen short of four hundred. Nevertheless, that figure remains historically low.
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  LaSalle County once averaged seven hundred drunk driving arrests annually.
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  The record is eight hundred and twenty four, and the
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  total has trended downward thanks to ever rising penalties and
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  societal changes led by young people embracing cannabis over alcohol.
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  Despite the projected uptick, PERU attorney John Fisher said DUIs
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  still are an overall decline, at least from a historical perspective.
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  I used to have a ton of DUIs, Fisher said.
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  Now it's more driving while suspended or revoked because of
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  prior to UIs. Ottawa Police Chief Mike Cheatham said he
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  thinks this year's upswing is more of a return to
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  normal and that last year's low total was an aberration.
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  I think the odd year was last year, unfortunately, Cheatham said.
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  I would like to see them decrease and stay. However,
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  that does not seem to be the case.