By MARGIE TRAX PAGE - Staff Writer - mtrax@starbeacon.com
With fewer Ashtabula County sheriff’s deputies on the road, Ohio State Highway Patrol troopers will work hard to patrol the entire county for drunk and impaired drivers on Super Bowl Sunday, OHP Lt. Mike Harmon said.
“Of course, we are concerned about trying to cover the entire county with just one Sheriff’s Department car on the road,” Harmon said. “The lack of deputies will always be a concern. It affects how we do business. We rely on the Sheriff’s Department for a lot of things.”
Harmon said manpower and overtime restrictions and bad weather will not permit the Saybrook Township OHP post to conduct sobriety checkpoints on Sunday.
“We will be out there without normal manpower, and the troopers will definitely be on the lookout for drunk drivers,” Harmon said. “All eyes will be open for anything abnormal.”
Harmon said Super Bowl Sunday usually nets a high number of impaired-driving violations statewide, though last year’s game night was “nothing out of the ordinary.”
Harmon said this year, troopers will “go where the people are” to catch drunk drivers.
The National Highway Safety and Traffic Association reports four people died on Super Bowl Sunday statewide last year, and 144 motorists were injured, and 19 accidents were drunk driving-related.
Harmon said he is concerned the legal consequences of drunk driving will be undermined by the county’s lack of jail space, as the population at the county jail has been reduced because of Sheriff’s Department layoffs.
“When arresting drunk drivers and habitual drunk drivers, we need a place to take them. Because there are now limitations on the county jail, some drunk drivers will be taken to the OHP post and then driven home,” Harmon said.
“It certainly doesn’t have the same effect on a person as when we lock them up for a weekend,” he said.
