City police holiday check stops net 28 criminal charges

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This article was published 11/01/2023 (714 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Karen Reimer doesn’t wish her heartache on anyone — but she knows every day, someone’s life is destroyed by an impaired driver.

Reimer, whose 24-year-old daughter Jordyn Reimer was killed in spring 2022 by an alleged drunk driver in Transcona, said it was “incredibly upsetting” to hear the Winnipeg Police Service’s holiday season impaired driving check stop campaign netted dozens of people reportedly under the influence behind the wheel.

Her daughter was acting as a designated driver when a pickup truck slammed into her vehicle at the intersection of Bond Street and Kildare Avenue West around 2:20 a.m. May 1.

“If we’re just to going continue to let the status quo be the status quo, then every day new families are going to suffer like our family has suffered,” Reimer said Thursday.

“These are not accidents, these are preventable… A vehicle becomes a weapon, so why, as a society, can we not see that it’s the same thing? Why do we allow people to get in and use a weapon and kill people, and that weapon just happens to be a vehicle, but we wouldn’t allow this if it was a gun.”

Winnipeg police said they stopped 2,929 vehicles and found 75 drivers under the influence of alcohol or drugs via the check stop program throughout the city from Dec. 1 to New Year’s Eve.

Officers charged 28 of them with criminal impaired driving offences; police also wrote 96 traffic tickets.

Police conducted 481 breath tests, 47 of which resulted in immediate driving prohibitions. The average blood alcohol concentration was 140 milligrams per 100 millilitres of blood, while the highest was 270 mg. The legal limit is 80 mg/100 ml.

Of the 75 people deemed impaired, 56 were men and 19 were women. The average age was 36, while the youngest alleged impaired driver was 18 and the oldest was 66, police said.

Traffic division Patrol Sgt. Stéphane Fontaine, who co-ordinates impaired driving countermeasures, said of the 41 serious or fatal collisions Winnipeg police investigated last year, alcohol or drug impairment was suspected in five.

Preliminary data Fontaine provided Thursday showed city police laid at least 231 criminal impaired driving-related charges and issued 211 roadside driving prohibitions or licence suspensions in the same time period.

“It has serious and even fatal consequences,” said Fontaine. “We continuously try to catch as many impaired drivers in the act (as we can), as well, deter others from making the bad decision to drive when they really shouldn’t.”

He said drivers need to realize their actions have consequences.

“People are losing their lives to something that is completely preventable, if the accused impaired driver would have simply made a different decision — or what I would refer to as the proper decision — not to drive,” Fontaine said.

“If they don’t want to accept the fact it may hurt themselves or other people, they have to realize that getting caught means serious consequences for them.”

On May 2, police announced Tyler Scott Goodman, 28, had been charged with dangerous driving causing death, driving causing death while impaired, and failing to remain at the scene in the Reimer case.

Winnipeg police have alleged the truck’s driver and occupants fled the scene of the accident. The accused’s mother, Laurie Lynn Goodman, 57, was later charged with obstructing justice and two counts of accessory after the fact.

Trial dates have not yet been set, and the Reimer family is appealing the decision of the Crown prosecution service not to charge the truck passengers who allegedly fled the scene.

“I feel strongly that the other people in the car had a role to play to stop (the accused) from driving impaired, and they didn’t,” Reimer said.

“I think that any person who gets in the car with an impaired driver is just giving a false sense… that it’s OK to drive.”

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @erik_pindera