In Naperville, veteran Officer Robert Maloney works from 3 p.m. until 3 a.m. and is not limited to a specific beat but free to patrol the entire city.
That schedule and the freedom to travel Washington Street, Illinois Highway 59 and Ogden Avenue in Naperville helped Maloney write the most driving-under-the-influence citations in the city last year.
Which is saying something, considering that Naperville, for the fourth year in a row, wrote more DUI tickets than any other Illinois municipality outside of Chicago, according to a report released Tuesday by the Schaumburg-based Alliance Against Intoxicated Motorists.
“I just think we’ve got a good group of guys that aggressively patrol. They’re out there, and they are looking for that,” said Maloney, who wrote 105 of the 717 DUI tickets in Naperville last year.
Naperville wrote more tickets than Rockford (660), Peoria (567) and Waukegan (494). Suburbs that wrote a high number of DUI tickets last year included Carol Stream (463), Buffalo Grove (441), Hoffman Estates (378) and Schaumburg (378).
The group has been releasing annual reports on DUI enforcement since 1990 to recognize departments that do a good job of DUI enforcement and to draw attention to police departments that do not, said executive director Charlene Chapman.
The group surveys 700 of the 1,000 or so police departments in Illinois.
Although it requests drunken driving statistics from departments under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act, only 57 percent respond, Chapman said. Most are in northern Illinois.
The survey covers departments that have at least five officers and the alliance does not study campus, railroad or forest preserve police departments. The Chicago Police Department also is excluded from the survey because it is so large it would be the top DUI ticket writer every year, Chapman said.
Chicago police officers are included in the alliance’s ranking of individual ticket writers and the 374 tickets written last year by Officer John Haleas topped the state. Chicago police officers claimed five of the top 10 ticket-writing slots.
The strategy behind DUI enforcement differs from department to department.
Some municipalities like Cary in McHenry County dedicate an officer to DUI enforcement on selected evenings.
The strategy helped Cary’s 28 sworn officers write 249 DUI citations last year, fifth among police departments on citations per officer basis.
“We just take the enforcement of DUI very seriously. We don’t want people driving through Cary drunk. The safety of our town is important,” said Deputy Chief Ed Fetzer.
Others expect all officers on a shift to enforce DUI laws.
Naperville Police Chief David Dial said the department places a premium on drunken-driving enforcement because “we continue to have more people killed or injured in traffic accidents in Naperville than from all other crimes combined.”
Naperville, with a population of around 140,000, has a small police force of 188 when compared to other cities its size, Dial said. The city’s ratio of 1.3 officers per 1,000 residents is below the national average of 1.8 for Midwestern cities with populations between 100,000 and 250,000.
Dial said the majority of people ticketed are stopped on busy roads traveling through the city, Dial said.
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Although Naperville wrote more tickets than any other community, the number of DUI arrests in the city were down 22.6 percent from 2004. Dial predicted that Naperville would rank number one in DUI arrests again in next year’s alliance report.
“The number of arrests is back up again this year,” Dial said. “We didn’t slow anybody down from driving drunk.”
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For the department rankings, go to http://www.aaim1.org/duiarrestsurvey.htm .
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