Business & Tech
How Does Batavia Stack Up on DUI Arrests? Fewer Than Most
Statistics from the Alliance Against Intoxicated Motorists show which police departments in the area made the most DUI arrests per officer in 2012.
By Darren McRoy, Ted Schnell and Rick Nagel
Batavia is at the lower end of 52 area communities in both the number of drunken driving arrests and the ratio of police officers to DUI arrests.
According to the Alliance Against Intoxicated Motorists, which this week released its annual survey of Illinois DUI arrests, the Tri-Cities as a whole are at the lower end of the spectrum overall. The 126 sworn police officers employed by the Tri-Cities arrested 223 drunken drivers in 2012 — an average of 1.77 DUI arrests per officer.
The numbers would appear to discount the occasional criticisms that police are too diligent about cracking down on drunken drivers.
The Batavia Police Department has 39 sworn officers who netted 34 DUI arrests in 2012, for a ratio of .97—the fewest total arrests and lowest ratio in the Tri-Cities.
The Geneva Police Department made 54 DUI arrests in 2012, 1.54 arrests per each of its 35 sworn officers. Its average is less than the 2.6 per officer in St. Charles and 2.33 arrests per officer in nearby West Chicago, but greater than the 1.4 average for DuPage County, 1.18 for Kane County, and .97 in Batavia.
St. Charles' 52 officers arrested 135 drunken drivers in 2012, to establish that 2.6 DUI arrests for each of the department’s officers, according to AAIM’s figures. That placed St. Charles at No. 20 on the list of 52 agencies and No. 1 in the Tri-Cities.
AAIM’s survey contains 2012 arrest data for all Illinois counties and for nearly all towns. The above chart shows the data for west-Chicago towns, sorted by DUI arrest rate per sworn officer.
“One reason AAIM continues to survey and report the number of impaired driving arrests throughout Illinois is because traffic safety advocates believe that drunk drivers who are arrested are the fortunate ones," crash supervisor and AAIM Board Vice President Marti Belluschi said in a press release.
"In our impaired driving prevention programs, we always remind people that if they are driving drunk they are lucky if it is a cop that stops them, rather than a tree, another car or a small child."
The village of Itasca had the highest arrest rate per officer in the entire state of Illinois (11.48). The city of Naperville had the second highest overall number of arrests (662), surpassed only by Rockford.
