Police Conduct Prom-Night Roadside Sobriety Check

By Andrew Gorosko

Newtown police conducted a checkpoint for drunken drivers on the night of May 19 and early morning of May 20 at a busy intersection at Fairfield Hills, stopping an estimated 400 motorists to check their sobriety.

As motorists drove on the Fairfield Hills east-west bypass road, which also is known as Mile Hill Road and Wasserman Way, police methodically stopped drivers at the street’s intersection with Trades Lane. Between 8:30 pm May 19 and 2:15 am May 20, a team of eight town officers stopped each motorist who was traveling in either direction on the thoroughfare.

Acting Police Chief Michael Kehoe said Monday the sobriety checkpoint was the first such enforcement event conducted solely by town police. Past checkpoints have been joint efforts of town police and state police. Town police received funding for the checkpoint from a federal highway safety grant.

Police chose the night for the sobriety check because it was the night of the Newtown High School junior-senior prom, which was held at a restaurant in Seymour. The Fairfield Hills bypass road is a major local road which many promgoers would have used on their way to and from the party.

Police did not charge any promgoers with drunken driving.

At the checkpoint, police charged one motorist with driving under the influence of drugs. Also, an officer who was assigned to the checkpoint spotted and apprehended an apparent drunken driver while the officer was traveling on Queen Street.

Besides those arrests, police at the checkpoint lodged several motor vehicle charges, a criminal charge, and issued verbal warnings for failure to wear seat belts.

Sergeant Henry Stormer supervised six patrolmen and an auxiliary police officer at the checkpoint. The Sandy Hook Volunteer Fire and Rescue Company’s rescue truck, which is equipped with high-intensity lighting equipment, illuminated the checkpoint area.

“It’s making everybody safe,” Acting Chief Kehoe said of the use of sobriety checkpoints. Police wanted to send a clear message that drunken driving is unacceptable, he said. 

Parents who were stopped by police at the checkpoint expressed appreciation that police were actively seeking out intoxicated motorists, according to police.

In the course of the evening, police stopped and searched about 15 limousines as part of the enforcement effort, Sgt Stormer said.

“I was surprised by the amount of traffic on that road,” he said.

Unlike police training of the past, which instructed officers to identify obviously drunken drivers, current police training instructs officers to identify drivers who are on the borderline of intoxication, Sgt Stormer said. People who police believe to be intoxicated are given a series of field sobriety tests to perform. For physical evidence of alcohol intoxication, police use a breath analysis device at the police station.

Acting Chief Kehoe said police plan to conduct another sobriety checkpoint at an unspecified location to coincide with the Newtown High School graduation in June.