Regional traffic team targets impaired driving through education, enforcement

When Halloween fell on a Friday this year, followed by an Oregon State home football game on Saturday, the Benton County Regional Traffic Team mobilized more than 40 law enforcement officers for a coordinated response.

The two-day operation resulted in 446 traffic stops, 151 citations, 38 field sobriety tests and 20 arrests for driving under the influence of intoxicants.

“They will typically take a look at events that they believe may have the tendency for people to drink and drive,” said Dave Gurski, Philomath chief of police.

The Halloween weekend effort exemplifies the mission of the regional traffic team, formed by Philomath Police Department, Corvallis Police Department and the Benton County Sheriff’s Office to improve road safety and reduce crashes caused by impaired drivers through interagency collaboration, proactive enforcement and public education.

Gurski said he believed the effort yielded the highest number of DUII arrests compared to any previous operation. In addition to Philomath and Corvallis police and BCSO, the Albany Police Department and Oregon State Police were also involved.

The team conducted its very first operation on Nov. 9, 2024, during an OSU home football game and the university’s Fall Family Weekend. 

The Benton County Regional Traffic Team’s program gained momentum in February with enforcement efforts at the Newport Seafood and Wine Festival, followed by operations during the Philomath Frolic and Rodeo in July and other events throughout the year.

Currently, the agencies are running their most challenging campaign yet — the “12 Days of Traffic Safety,” which kicked off Dec. 21 and continues through New Year’s Day.

“This one is a little bit more complex than some of the others because each day is going to have a different theme,” Gurski said.

The 12-day campaign addresses the “Fatal 5” — a law enforcement term referring to the five leading behavioral causes of traffic fatalities — impaired driving, distracted driving, speeding, failure to use seatbelts and aggressive or reckless driving.

“Traffic safety is a big deal,” Philomath Police Sgt. Blake Bowers said Friday night while on patrol. “I think it’s something that we owe to the community to make it a priority for us, not just to respond to calls but also to be out there making sure that these tragedies don’t happen in the first place.”

The first nine days of the campaign included daily social media posts about vehicle speed, vehicle maintenance, road conditions, designating a driver, cellphone use, occupant safety, distracted driving, pedestrian safety and protective equipment.

“The objective for most of these are very similar,” Gurski said. “It’s basically to improve road safety and reduce traffic crashes resulting from impaired drivers or other hazardous driving behavior throughout the holidays.”

Building regional partnerships

Each operation follows a three-part structure — community engagement and public education, pre-event briefing and high-visibility saturation patrols.

“Usually the event kicks off with a briefing at around 5 or 6 o’clock in the evening and they go over some of the things that they’re looking for — mainly impaired drivers,” Gurski said.

The briefings include training components that provide officers with continuing education credits from the Department of Public Safety Standards and Training. Recent sessions have featured presentations on case law updates and legal standards, and have even included talks from family members impacted by DUII crashes.

“It’s pretty incredible that these people are able to come and talk about the most horrible time in their life — to relive that over and over, it’s pretty difficult,” Bowers said.

The training sessions also serve another purpose — building relationships among officers from different agencies.

“It was super important for me and I’ll tell you, I had never worked the road with anybody in that room that day,” said Benton County Sheriff Jef Van Arsdall, describing a recent training session. “There were over 20 officers from different agencies … You’re finding new people, new interests and you go ahead. That’s pretty fun, for me at least.”

Van Arsdall said the program has created a sense of camaraderie within the law enforcement community.

“It sure has done an awful lot for building that common goal and just reminding folks that hey, there’s a greater good,” he said. “And once in a while, I think it’s good to reset that.”

The three agencies take turns leading operations, with point persons coordinating efforts — Bowers at Philomath Police, Deputy Colin Tominey at the sheriff’s office and Brittany Hughes at Corvallis Police.

Regional partners, including the Albany Police Department and Oregon State Police, have joined various operations.

“There’s a number of neighboring or regional agencies that are participating in it and they’re offering overtime opportunities for their officers to sign up and go and do this kind of high-visibility enforcement,” Gurski said. “Their participation is pretty critical as well … it’s not something that we could pull off by ourselves. It’s been a kind of a team approach with Benton County.”

Strategic targeting

The team selects enforcement dates based on events and holidays associated with increased alcohol consumption and higher traffic volumes.

“Historically, we’ve looked at holiday weekends or events that are kind of tied to consuming alcohol and have the potential for a higher number of impaired drivers,” Gurski said.

The Newport Seafood and Wine Festival operation in February involved coordination with Oregon Coast agencies along the Highway 20 corridor.

The strategic timing reflects traffic safety statistics. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s most-recent data, December is the most dangerous month for travel, with road conditions, poor weather, increased stress, holiday traffic and alcohol consumption all contributing to crash risks.

On Highway 20 last year, seven people died in crashes, with 85% of those fatalities involving alcohol or other intoxicating substances, Bowers said.

“We didn’t come close to that with murders or anything like that,” Bowers said. “It’s just one of the most dangerous things we do and it’s so tragic. It disrupts the entire community and people’s lives and it happens just like that.”

A key philosophy of the regional team distinguishes it from traditional enforcement — transparency.

“We really try to be upfront about it,” Bowers said. “A big part of what we do is we advertise when we’re going to be patrolling these extra patrols.”

The agencies coordinate social media campaigns in advance of operations. Philomath’s Facebook presence is managed largely by administrative specialist Katie Miller.

“We want people to be aware of it,” Bowers said. “I mean, we don’t want to surprise people and catch them doing dangerous things, we would rather them be aware of it and saying, ‘OK, well I’m not going to do that tonight’ or ‘I’m going to be smart, I’m going to do this and make better decisions’ because they know we’re going to be out there, because they know we’re out there stopping cars and we’re looking for dangerous behavior.”

The Benton County Health Department has published concurrent social media campaigns focusing on health and safety.

“We don’t have anything set up as a ‘gotcha’ moment,” Van Arsdall said. “We make sure that we educate folks. On the front end, we’re working with the health department, social media, anything we can do to get information out prior to the events.”

The educational approach extends to traffic stops during operations.

“From my perspective as a Benton County sheriff, my goal wasn’t necessarily to give a receipt for every traffic violation,” Van Arsdall said. “The entire mood here is these are educational stops. We want to make sure folks are doing things the right way and they’re aware of whatever the violation is, don’t do it again and then move on.”

Measuring success

Law enforcement officials define success not by arrest numbers but by behavioral change.

“An event like this would be a success if there were no DUII arrests, period, for the entire event,” Gurski said. “That would let us know that with the increased patrols out there, if we’re not detecting any of those impaired drivers, then the education and the social media blitz, if you will, is having a positive impact in deterring those types of dangerous behaviors.”

Van Arsdall has a similar perspective.

“If anyone made a bunch of traffic stops and didn’t make any arrests, that would be a great, successful evening for them,” Van Arsdall said. “That’s the end goal. You don’t want to be taking people to jail, you want to make sure everybody’s doing things the right way.”

The desire, officials said, is that awareness of increased patrols encourages people to make safer choices.

“The hope is that we’ll be educating people prior to these events going on and they’ll find an alternative means of transportation if they plan to be drinking,” Gurski said. “So we’re trying to deter these types of behaviors through education and then also enforcement.”

Gurski said the community response has been positive.

“I think the nice thing about this, the objective that they’re trying to accomplish, is obviously to improve safety,” he said. “I think everybody wants safer streets and safer highways. But also, I think the fact that we do the social media campaign as well as try to educate the public about the event and that we’re going to be out there in increased numbers looking for this type of dangerous behavior is also helpful — it’s not a big surprise, it’s not a big secret … we’re looking for compliance.”

Challenge coins and community

Each operation features custom challenge coins featuring full-color artwork and safety messages. Past examples include “Don’t be shellfish, drive sober” with a crab image for the Newport operation, “Don’t let this be your last ride, drive sober” with a bullrider for the Philomath Frolic and Rodeo, and “Don’t make a grave mistake, drive sober” with a skeleton’s hand holding a beer bottle for Halloween.

Bowers is heavily involved with the design of the coins.

“He loves doing this kind of stuff and he’s super witty and comes up with great little slogans,” Gurski said. “Some of them have come from other participants but he’s got some input for them and I think he’s designed almost all of these logos. The first one, I thought, was really cool. In fact, the fire department took it off our website and put it on their readerboard and we got a lot of positive feedback.”

The coins aren’t tied to arrest quotas but represent participation in the events.

“It’s a small incentive to try to encourage some people that may be intimidated by the DUII enforcement or maybe are challenged by it or on the fence about it, to encourage them to come out and help our community,” Bowers said.

“One of the things that the challenge coins do is help people feel like they have a sense of community,” he added. “Especially here in Philomath or some of the smaller agencies … this job can be difficult to do and it’s important to remember that there are other good people out there that are also doing the same work and trying to make sure the community is safe.”

Each agency contributes to operations in different ways. The sheriff’s office uses funding from state grants to cover overtime during operations. Philomath Police has budgeted funds to support the program.

“Each agency has opened up overtime shifts to help promote this and to support it,” Gurski said. “There’s also been a little bit of funding that’s gone towards paying for some of the training and also some of the refreshments at the training.”

Officials said the program will continue as long as participation remains strong and impaired driving remains a problem.

“As long as we’ve got good participation and as long as we’re still seeing numbers — as far as the number of arrests for DUII — as long as that’s a problem and there’s an interest in participation by the regional agencies, we’ll continue to do it,” Gurski said.

Focus on traffic safety

Bowers emphasized that while DUII enforcement gets significant attention, the team addresses broader traffic safety issues.

“We do focus on every aspect of traffic safety in general,” Bowers said. “DUII just generally kind of encompasses a big part of what traffic safety is about but there’s also lots of other things that we focus on, like speed, lane discipline, making sure people are wearing their seatbelts, distracted driving, that kind of thing. We’re not doing anything different than what we normally do, we’re just drawing more attention to it.”

With Philomath’s small department — currently fully staffed with a chief, two sergeants and seven officers — patrol officers handle multiple duties.

“We’ve got a small department so we don’t have dedicated detectives and so we are responsible for conducting our investigations, responding to calls that come out and then also in our spare time when we’re available to conduct patrols to make sure that people are obeying the laws and being safe out on the roads,” Bowers said.

The focused enforcement periods allow officers to concentrate solely on traffic safety.

“I think this is something that’s starting to gain some traction that everybody really enjoys,” Gurski said. “It’s a good opportunity for the officers — they’re not on duty to take calls, they’re out to work traffic and so it’s not like the radio can pull them away.”

Bowers said he hopes the regional traffic team becomes a permanent fixture in regional law enforcement.

“I hope there’s not going to be an end date anytime soon,” he said. “There are a lot of interagency teams that we have throughout law enforcement for different things. … I think this is just one aspect that I hope continues on.”

The idea for the regional team grew out of a presentation at an Oregon DUII Multidisciplinary Task Force conference.

Van Arsdall summed up the team’s mission simply: “It just serves as a good reminder to folks that if you’re going to do these things, it’s OK, just do it in moderation or make plans to have alternative solutions so that you don’t come across this. That’s it in a nutshell — we just want to make sure folks in Benton County are safe.”