On a chilly, damp morning, I responded to a vehicle crash involving two cars. By the radio dispatch I knew it wasn’t going to be pretty. It was dispatched as a head on collision on dead man’s corner (Michigan Avenue, slightly West of Cline) with potential fatalities. I arrived with the fire department and it was clear there would be no survivors. They extracted the four bodies out of the two vehicles and laid them alongside each other, on the shoulder of the road. Each had a sheet over them, each had a piece of paper describing their location in the vehicle, and each had severe, horrific injuries that killed them on contact. As our traffic investigators started their scene and car search, they found multiple beer cans in one of the cars, and also a fifth body. The body of a woman, was found compacted under the front seat of one of the vehicles. The impact was so severe, the spare tire went through the rear fire wall, through the back seat and front seat area, and lodged itself in the dashboard. The vehicles, which both had drunk drivers behind the wheel, had been traveling at 60 or 70 mph when they crashed head on into each other. Although it has been fifteen years ago or longer, I did not forget the lessons that I learned that morning.
Friday night, for the first time in fifteen years, the Hammond Police Department conducted a Drunk Driving Checkpoint, in the 7100 block of Kennedy Ave. We have not performed them for years, they were outlawed by the US Supreme Court. With changed rules and procedures, they are now permitted. Every car must be stopped, and the cars can only be detained for a very short period of time. For you Liberal Laura’s that feel this is a violation of your Fourth Amendment rights against search and seizure, the Supreme Court has consistently stated that you do not have the same rights and expectations of privacy when you are in a car versus being in your home. If you are at home drinking, you can’t kill my friends or family. If you are drinking in your car, anything can happen.
We stopped every car we could until the lot of the Virgil Huber Funeral Home was full. Each vehicle was kept less than two minutes (yes, we timed each stop with a stop watch) unless there was an issue like the driver couldn’t find license and registration or we decided to write a citation for an infraction that was observed. I feel the inconvenience to innocent drivers, was minimal.
I had an easy job, I stood in the middle of the North bound lane of Kennedy Avenue ( we only stopped North bounders) and stopped cars and directed cars into the parking lot. It was also by far, the most dangerous job, and I’m still wondering why the Operation Commander, Lieutenant Patrick Vicari, assigned me to this duty. Maybe he was thinking I would end up like a bug on a windshield and there would be instant move-ups in the department. Maybe he thought with my cat-like reflexes that I would be in no danger. For whatever the reason, I put on my fashionable and practical 3M reflector vest, and headed into the street. There were two near misses, one from a confused foreign exchange student, and one driver that was drunk.
I could tell by the way the man nearly ran me over that he was having trouble piloting his car. I yelled to the traffic officer Sergeant Chuck Turner, that he had a 10-55 (drunk) on the way. When he was told to pull his vehicle in the provided space, he did so diagonally, even though everyone else was parked in a long, straight row. When Sergeant Turner smelled the alcohol on the man’s person he asked him how many beers he had consumed. Getting the standard answer of “two” (if you drink a forty pack of beer you still answer “two”) Chuck asked him to get out of the car. The man was neatly dressed in a suit and tie (tie did not match, I’m a fashion critic) and became angry at Turner. He told Sergeant Turner, “you need to understand, I’m going to have breakfast!” He said this several times throughout the encounter. I don’t know what his food consumption had to do with our enforcement of the law, but he made sure to throw it out there. During the field sobriety test, he counted aloud in a rather odd fashion, one… two… five… three…did I say two? It was apparent by his clumsy actions that he was intoxicated. He also failed the portable breath test with a fairly high score. I got a big surprise when I tested his passenger wife, to see if she was sober enough to drive the family car. She tested .000 ! Yes folks that’s right, she was stone cold sober and allowed her obviously drunk husband to drive. The wife got angry with us for arresting him, and even stated several times, he didn’t drink anything! Things would have worked out better if she (A) told him his selection of ties sucked. (B) Drove his drunk butt home.
I guess the driver got his grand slam breakfast, but it was at the Hammond Police Jail.
We arrested six drivers in all, three for drunk driving, three for drugs. Sergeant Ray Finley was working one of our enforcement lanes, and glanced into a stopped SUV. The backseat passenger, either asleep or feigning sleep, had a small bag of cocaine resting in plain view, on his crotch. The male driver, and female front seat passenger, all ended up being arrested for possession of cocaine. I transported the female passenger, who insisted that she could not miss her class in cosmetology school, Saturday morning.
Throughout the night, many of the stopped drivers thanked us for our efforts. I know that ad campaigns, peer pressure and increased enforcement, has reduced incidents of drunk driving. However; we still see far too many intoxicated drivers involved in vehicle crashes.
I would like to personally thank Lieutenant Patrick Vicari for his efforts Friday night. We all made it home alive and unscratched. His operation was a success, and it ran very smoothly. I would like to also like to thank the 16 police officers and 7 Emergency Management officers who participated in the drunk driving checkpoint (all salaries were paid by a federal grant). Everyone performed their jobs efficiently and professionally.

Serving on the thin blue line, night and day,
Chief Brian Miller