By the Numbers
2,384 OVI arrests by state troopers this year in a six-county area, from Butler to Clark
1,832 OVI arrests in those six counties from 11 p.m. to 4 a.m.
1,303 OVI arrests on Saturday or Sunday, 55 percent of the total
44 OVI arrests in the 5-hour window from 7 a.m. to noon
16 OVI-related fatal crashes in Montgomery County in 2014 (there were 17 last year)
Source: Ohio State Highway Patrol
OVI caseloads in area courts, 2013
Courts in Ohio handled 78,352 Operating a Vehicle Impaired (OVI) caseloads in 2013. The 10 municipal and county courts in our region that handled the most cases:
Clark County … 1,226
Miami County … 1,040
Vandalia … 892
Fairborn … 826
Kettering … 679
Miamisburg … 668
Dayton … 631
Butler County 3 … 494
Montgomery County … 469
Middletown … 454
Source: 2013 Ohio Courts Statistical Report
When Sgt. Jerod Keyes steers his Dodge Charger onto North Dixie Drive, he knows two things: He will find drivers who are drunk and drivers who will lie to him about how much they’ve been drinking.
“The common answer is ‘I’ve had two.’ A lot of people say ‘none’ and you kind of know they’re lying,” said Keyes, the night supervisor at the Ohio State Highway Patrol’s Dayton post. “If you can smell it and see the bloodshot eyes, slurred speech, fumbling with their license, that might lead you to believe otherwise if they tell you they haven’t had anything to drink.”
Keyes patrols one of the hot spots revealed in a Dayton Daily News examination of OVI arrests in a six-county area between Jan. 1 and Nov. 9. Of the patrol’s 652 arrests for Operating a Vehicle Impaired in Montgomery County, more than 60 came on North Dixie Drive in Harrison Twp., which is home to a number of bars and strip clubs.
Other OVI hotbeds include Interstate 675, which also had more than 60 arrests; Ohio 725 between Miamisburg and Centerville near the Dayton Mall, which yielded more than 50; and Colonel Glenn Highway near Wright State University, which had 30.
So far in 2014, troopers have made about 2,400 OVI arrests in Montgomery, Butler, Warren, Greene, Clark and Miami counties — a slight increase over the same period in 2013. OVI arrests are up 17 percent in Montgomery County and 42 percent in Warren County.
“It’s not something we can ever let up on,” said Lt. Mark Nichols, Dayton post commander. “I don’t know if we’ve come at it any harder this year, we’ve just continuously made it a priority.”
Troopers say the OVI patrols do more than bring in ticket revenue; they keep potential killers off the road.
Last year, Montgomery County registered 17 OVI-related fatal crashes, second most in the state behind Cuyahoga County’s 22. Statewide, there were 309 such crashes, killing 341 people.
OVI arrests ramp up after midnight. More than half of the arrests occurred during a three-hour window between 1 a.m. and 4 a.m., and more than three-fourths were between midnight and 5 a.m.
“I’ll be honest: With my family, if I’m out late at night I know I’m not going to take this way home or that way home because I know that stuff’s out there,” said Keyes, who has worked the overnight shift for four years. “I definitely think about where I’m at; I use what I learn on the job.”
78,000 cases
The highway patrol this year is on pace to make more than 700 OVI arrests in Montgomery County, the most in the region. Dayton police made 355 OVI arrests as of last Wednesday, while the Montgomery County sheriff’s office made 277 through October.
Four area courts — Vandalia, Fairborn and Clark and Miami counties — all had more than 800 OVI cases last year. Statewide, the OVI caseload totaled more than 78,000.
“The frustration we have is we’re trying to teach the same message over and over again,” Nichols said. “It’s a pretty simple concept: don’t drink and drive. But it’s still a problem we battle daily, because it leads to unnecessary deaths and injuries.”
This year, nearly half of the fatal crashes in Montgomery County — 16 of 34 — have involved a drunk driver. That is well above the national average of 31 percent reported in 2012, the most recent data supplied by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Nationally, alcohol-impaired driving fatalities declined by 21 percent from 2003 to 2012, according to the NHTSA.
Holiday warning
The most OVI arrests in the region occur, predictably, on the weekends, with 72 percent coming on Friday, Saturday or Sunday, the newspaper’s examination found.
The date that has yielded the most OVI arrests this year was Aug. 30 — the Saturday of Labor Day weekend — when 32 people were arrested in the six-county region. The second-most arrests were made on May 25, the Sunday before Memorial Day, when 26 drivers were stopped.
Sometimes, though, the roads are unexpectedly quiet. That was the case on a Thursday night earlier this month when the Browns routed the Bengals in a nationally televised football game.
“We were thinking that night might have been a busy night, but I think people were so depressed they went home early,” Keyes said. “It was really, really slow.”
While Montgomery County, the largest of the six counties analyzed, has the most OVIs, Warren County has the highest rate of arrests among the driving-age population. Warren County had 27.7 OVI arrests for every 10,000 residents age 16 or over, followed by Clark County with 23.7 and Greene County with 22. Montgomery County’s rate was 15.2.
The data reflects a number of factors, including the size and population of the county, the density of traffic and drinking establishments and the aggressiveness of law enforcement.
“If you have aggressive and more-versed OVI officers that go after them harder, then your numbers go up,” said Lt. Matt Hamilton, commander of the Lebanon post in Warren County. He said an increase in staff also helped boost arrests.
The highway patrol will increase its presence this week, which is one of the busiest driving weeks of the year. It’s also one of the deadliest. Fatalities involving OVI drivers during the Thanksgiving holiday period numbered 203 nationwide in 2012, according to the NHTSA. That was more than any other holiday, including New Year’s (159).
Nichols said troopers try to stay more visible during holiday weeks. Also, more overtime is made available.
“The high-travel weekends we try to pull as many units as we can to put on the road for high visibility,” he said. “With high visibility comes more enforcement and the potential for us to get a hold of that impaired driver and make an arrest before it turns into an injury crash or fatal crash.”
Sobriety tests
Keyes’ arrest rate varies depending on how much time he spends on the road. He’ll be out there this week, but you won’t see him parked outside a strip club looking to pluck partiers as they pull out of the parking lot. That’s not how it’s done.
“That’s entrapment; that’s not who we are,” he said. “Because of the area we work in, I’m behind a lot of people near bars that I don’t stop. You need probable cause.
“If they’re not doing anything, they’re not doing anything. What’s to say that person didn’t go to a bar to pick up a friend who was drinking? You wait and allow them to give you some kind of violation, and then you make your assessment.”
As a reporter rode with Keyes on a recent Friday night, he pulled over about 30 motorists for a variety of reasons, including burned-out headlights and tail lights, improper turns and swerving into an adjacent lane.
If troopers suspect someone is impaired, they will conduct field sobriety tests. After pulling over one driver, Keyes gave an alphabet test (G to X), a counting test (68 to 43), a one-leg-stand test and a walk-and-turn test. He also can give a field breathalyzer test if a driver gives consent.
Keyes said some people practice the tests and results are subjective. That is not the case with the horizontal gaze nystagmus test, which reveals the involuntary jerking of the eyes if someone has been drinking.
“As you’re moving that pen, their eyes are going to bounce back and forth,” Keyes said. “That’s not normal. You can’t fake that.”
If a suspect fails the tests, they can be arrested. The official breathalyzer test is administered at a police station, and a blood-alcohol content of 0.08 percent is considered to be over the limit.
Keyes said the blood-alcohol content of most people generally drops by 0.015 every hour after they stop drinking.
In the end, it’s a trooper’s judgment whether to take someone to jail. Excuses don’t often work, but Keyes said sometimes the best decision is to let a friend or relative take an impaired driver home.
“One of the hardest that I’ve ever had was a guy who had just lost his wife and he was out drinking. That’s how he was dealing with it,” Keyes said. “I still had to take some type of enforcement action, but I didn’t take him to jail. He was really struggling with the entire situation. It was a tough one.”
Staff writers Ken McCall and Jim Otte contributed to this report
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