Review staff
While the May long weekend was relatively mild and incident-free in the community of Rimbey, the same can’t be said for some specific areas outside the town.
The first official long weekend of the spring/summer usually results in many heading to recreational areas to blow off some steam after months of winter weather, and that was certainly the case over the holiday.
“We had a busy weekend. Not only did we have the boating incident, but we also had a large forest fire near Hoadley,” said Cst. Ted Munro if the Rimbey RCMP. “But the Medicine Lake area is always a happening spot for us so we did a lot of patrols out there. We had a very large force at a check-stop out there on the Thursday night with the RCMP, sheriffs and fish and wildlife enforcement.”
He said the situation was a lot calmer than it has been in previous years and said many people were probably upset and reluctant to bring young children to the area in light of what has happened in the past.
But despite the drop in visitors, the RCMP were none-the-less, very busy.
Munro said seven Criminal Code driving charges were levied with another 40 provincial violations handed out mostly for alcohol-related infractions with the majority of those for having open liquor in a vehicle.
In addition to patrolling the Medicine Lake area, the RCMP also conducted several check stops on Highways 53, 771 and 20 which also resulted in some significant charges.
“It was actually quite disturbing to see so the amount of people drinking and driving,” Munro said. “One of our charges was to a gentleman on his way to Calgary who blew almost four times the legal limit. He was very, very intoxicated. So that’s a concern but it was nice to have the manpower here that weekend to do those check stops and that’s something we hope to continue throughout the summer.”
Despite government campaigning for years urging the public of the dangers of drinking and driving, Munro said the message is simply not getting through, at least not to a specific age group.
“The age group that were seeing with impaired drivers is not the younger people – which is encouraging. So if that trend continues then it’s good. It’d be the older crowd, the 40-plus crowd, who will either kill themselves off or eventually stop. It’s the mature drivers that are driving impaired,” he said. “One guy said to me that he works hard and plays hard and feels he’s entitled to a weekend off, and I don’t argue that. He is. He’s just not entitled to drink and drive.”