MANSFIELD — Lt. Jason Murfield met his stated goal on Saturday evening.
Zero impaired drivers came through a two-hour sobriety checkpoint on North Trimble Road.
“Our goal is actually zero and that means that everybody is complying. They’re either finding a safe ride home or they’re staying at home or wherever they are and they’re not driving.
“That’s what we want as a law enforcement agency,” said Murfield, commander of the Mansfield Post of the Ohio State Highway Patrol.
“We don’t seek to try to find OVIs. We just want to intervene before they cause that injury or that death by car,” he said.
Mansfield police Sgt. Paul Lumadue said 256 vehicles came through the checkpoint near Wyandotte Avenue, north of U.S. 30.
Murfield said one driver was “diverted” for field sobriety testing, but was found not to be impaired. All drivers were greeted and handed a card explaining why the checkpoint was occurring before they continued.
Before the evening began, Murfield said law enforcement officers look for signs of alcohol and/or drug impairment when they speak with motorists at the checkpoint.
“They both have different indicators. With alcohol, you have the odor of alcohol, slurred speech, bloodshot and/or glassy eyes. With drugs, sometimes it’s a lethargic appearance or slow methodical movements.
“Those are some of things that indicate they may be impaired and we will investigate further. If our investigation brings us to the conclusion that they’re impaired, then we will make that physical arrest,” Murfield said.
One such checkpoint is conducted annually in Richland County by the patrol, working in cooperation with other local law enforcement agencies. Different locations are selected each year.
“We have statistics and stuff that we pull and look for different areas,” Murfield said. “We try to span out to different areas around the county where we see areas that have a higher concentration of OVI arrest and OVI crashes.
“This just happens to be an area that we can partner with the City of Mansfield and work this area to try to combat that problem.”
Murfield said such checkpoints as much educational events as they are traffic enforcement.
“We always try to educate people first. We want the people in our community to understand the dangers of OVI.
(Below are photos from a sobriety checkpoint on Trimble Road in Mansfield on Saturday evening, conducted by the Mansfield Post of the Ohio State Highway Patrol, assisted by the Mansfield Police Department.)
“That way they don’t become one of the statistics on either the crash or the part where we arrest them. It has dire effects on people’s lives when they’re arrested or involved in a crash with alcohol or drugs involved,” Murfield said.
“Our goal at a checkpoint is zero OVI arrests. It’s not uncommon for us to find one or two. But in the last couple of years, we have had zero, which is a good number.”
The OVI checkpoint, funded by federal grant funds, is planned to deter and intercept impaired drivers, according to the patrol.
“There were 11,324 OVI-related crashes in which 725 people were killed last year
in Ohio,” Murfield said earlier this week.
“In 2023, troopers made more than 15,000 OVI arrests in an attempt to combat these
dangerous drivers. OVI checkpoints are designed to not only deter impaired driving,
but to proactively remove these dangerous drivers from our roadways,” he said.
