Thunder Bay police focus on deterring impaired drivers as Festive RIDE season opens

Thunder Bay police are implementing a new measure this holiday season with the aim of deterring impaired drivers in the city.

As part of the 2020 Festive RIDE program which officially begins Wednesday police will publish the names of everyone charged with impaired driving in Thunder Bay, traffic Const. Mark Cattani said Wednesday.

"The numbers this year are staggering for impaired driving," Cattani said during a virtual media conference on Wednesday. "At the end of the Festive RIDE season last year, we announced that we had reached a record of 204 charged individuals with impaired driving for the total year, which was by far the greatest number we'd ever seen."

However, Cattani said police 2020's numbers-to-date are already much higher than last year's.As of Wednesday, police had charged 251 people with impaired driving in Thunder Bay, with four of those comingin the 24 hours leading up to Wednesday's media conference.

"There is a very clear need for enforcement out there, as well as education, and any other kinds of deterrents that would prevent people from driving impaired in the first place," Cattani said.

Cattani said the move to publish names of those charged with impaired driving during the holidays is designed to be that deterrent.

"We've tried a number of different campaigns and strategies over the past few years," he said. "We've done educational campaigns, we've gone to schools and post-secondary institutions, we've done Zone Watch blitzes, we've done a number of media releases of the arrests we've made."

"We needed to think outside the box and come up with something that's going to deter people, perhaps at the last moment before they get behind the wheel of a car," he said. "We needed something that's going to be firm, and effective, to prevent impaired driving."

Other Ontario police services have used a similar measure in the past, and it's proven successful, Cattani said.

Police will publish informationabout impaired arrests on the service's website weekly, and the data will include the names, ages, and city of residence of those charged.

"We have built a pretty stringent policy of what meets the criteria," he said. "First of all, all criminal impaired driving is going to be reported, regardless of who the person is."

"However, there are going to be circumstances where we don't publish certain identifying information, such as if it identifies victims, if it involves schoolchildren, things of that nature."

Those charged with impaired driving also receive a 90-day administrative driver's licence suspension, police said.

Anyone who sees a suspected impaired driver is asked to call 911 immediately.