Over the Limit/Under Arrest – Law Enforcement Game Plan

Drunk Driving, Over the Limit, Under Arrest is a statewide law enforcement effort to save lives. MPB's Lawayne Childrey reports.

Last year alcohol related crashes killed 266 people on Mississippi roadways. It's a sobering message that finally hit home for 29 year old, Kevin McFall the night he drove drunk in Rankin County nearly killing an entire family. Today McFall is serving a 12 year prison sentence.

“Not only did I change the lives of 3 innocent victims, I also changed my own life dramatically. And if there’s anyone out there drinking and driving realize that this is real. You will get caught or you could end up just like me or you could end up even worse, killing someone.”

Over the next two weeks Mississippi law enforcement officers will aggressively look for and arrest all impaired drivers. And while national statistics show an upswing in the number of women drinking under the influence, Colonel Michael Berthay, Chief of the Mississippi Highway Patrol says no one will be excluded.

“Death knows no discrimination between race, gender, age or anything else. And we find that it’s a pretty wide gambit of people that continue to think they can drink and drive.”

Past crackdowns have focused primarily on interstates. This year however, Louisville Police Chief L.M. Clayburne says drivers should expect something different.

“A lot of our drunk drivers can drive all they want without ever getting out on our highways. So it’s not enough that the highway patrol is exhausting every means possible but we need to also clean up our streets inside the incorporated municipalities. If you looked at the headlines on some of these high profile cases, those serious injury wrecks that involved impaired drivers often are within the city limits.”

In 2008 Mississippi officers made about 33 thousand DUI arrests. For MPB News, I'm Lawayne Childrey.