Police prepare for weekend Homecoming festivities

Homecoming Week 2003 begins today as alumni return to the campus and students prepare for this weekend's festivities, including Friday's parade and Saturday's football game against Northwestern.\nBut the IU Police Department is also preparing.\nBecause of the expected influx of crowds, IUPD is expecting to deal with more alcohol-related offenses, including drunk driving.\n"Because it's Homecoming week, I think officers on the street will certainly be more conscious of watching for drunk drivers," said IUPD Lt. Jerry Minger.\nMinger said the department isn't increasing its patrols or enforcement, though. \nLast year, the IUPD made 46 arrests during Homecoming Week, including eight for drunk driving and public intoxication.\nOne of the third shift's main duties during its 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. run is to stop drunk drivers, Minger said. \nFormer IUPD Officer Nick Ojeda, who now works for the Scottsdale, Ariz., police department, said in July during his patrol on the third shift that officers can spot intoxicated people pretty easily.\n"When someone is extremely intoxicated, it's not hard to spot them, meaning their driving behavior is so erratic that it's hard not to notice them," Ojeda said. "What takes more skill and experience in an officer is spotting the person who is intoxicated above the legal limit but not blatantly so to the untrained eye." \nHe said officers are trained to look for certain driving behaviors such as swerving, inconsistent speeds and any movements that are out of the norm for a sober driver. \nThese movements include rolling stops, illegal lane changes, stopping for a green light, swerving, driving at night without head lights, driving abnormally slow, excessive breaking and running a red light, IUPD Sgt. Shannon Ramey said.\nOjeda said a typical stop during the third shift requires officers to look for signs the driver might be under the influence.\nAfter an officer pulls a suspected driver over, one of the signs is the smell of the alcohol on the breath, he said. \nIf an officer feels there is a chance the driver may be intoxicated, the officer might then start what is known as the Standardized Field Sobriety Test.\nDepending on the test's outcome, an officer might ask the potential drunk driver for consent to do further testing with what police call a "Certified Breath Test Machine," which is an instrument designed to measure alcohol content in breath. Essentially, the machine is more sophisticated than the normal Breathalyzer.\n"Once a subject has provided an adequate breath sample to the certified instrument and that sample has returned at a .08 percent BrAC or above, the officer has a statutory obligation to arrest the subject for operating a vehicle while intoxicated and operating with a BrAC of .08 percent or above," IUPD Lt. Tom Lee said.\nDuring a traffic stop, officers typically can use their own discretion to issue a ticket, Lee said.\nDepending on the circumstances, someone going 30 mph over the limit could potentially wind up getting a ticket or just a written warning. \nBut "Officer's Discretion" almost never exists when it comes to drunk drivers, Lee said.\n"OWI's do not offer too much but there is some," Ojeda said. "An officer only has discretion here if the driver is impaired between the levels of .05 to .08. The decision in this area can be made either way based on the other evidence and factors involved in the call."\nOjeda recalled one of his most memorable drunk-driving stops.\nHe said the driver was stopped on the 45/46 bypass driving at roughly 50 mph, swerving almost in the ditch on his side. Ojeda pulled the driver over, and he said the driver was so intoxicated he was hanging onto the steering wheel, laying between the seats. \n"A lot of people drive drunk and a lot of them make it home without incident," Ojeda said. "But all it takes is one time of seeing a serious injury or fatal crash to know all our saturated patrols are worth it. One of our many jobs is to protect people from drunk drivers and drunk drivers from themselves."\n-- Contact staff writer Brandon Morley at bmorley@indiana.edu.