Fox16 Investigates: Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over, In Some Spots

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Fox16 Investigates compiled five years of arrest citation data recorded from Little Rock District court after a call to our tip hotline questioning why the departments DWI numbers were so much lower than other cities of smaller or even comparable size. We mapped where DWIs are and are not happening in the city, and give the department a look at their own numbers to ask why. 

 

“Sunday August 25th is a day I don’t remember,” Rodshelle Cole said, flipping through photos of the aftermath of the accident. 

 

When a drunk driver slammed into Cole on her way home from work, she was left with a broken knee cap, collapsed lungs and brain swelling that left her in a coma for five days. It forced her to learn to walk, talk and feed herself all over again at 21 years old. 

 

“My boyfriend was in the car with me, and he came to after the accident. He heard the ambulance workers and police saying that the other driver and I had died on impact. He spent a week thinking I was gone. At first, I was just shocked that it happened. Now, I’m just grateful to be alive.” 

 

Cole wasn’t driving after midnight on a busy stretch you might expect DWIs to be cited. She was near the intersection of Shackelford and Chenal at 8 o’clock on a Sunday night. 

 

“My wreck was in West Little Rock. You don’t really see many cops out there,” she said. “And maybe that’s where the accidents happen, where there isn’t a police presence as much.” 

 

The Little Rock DWI Task Force is comprised of just three officers responsible for patrolling a city of roughly 200,000 people. And some looking at the department’s DWI numbers, compared to other metropolitan areas, might say Little Rock’s citations seem low.

 

“You’re talking about one officer for every 67,000 people,” said Sergeant Roger Snook, who heads the DWI Task Force at LRPD. “It can be difficult to cover the entire city. And with patrol officers, if they suspect a DWI during a traffic stop, they’ll call us and have us conduct the DWI portion. That way we’re sure to carry it out so it’s standardized and will hold up in court, but it also allows those patrol officers to respond to calls.” 

 

From 2010 to 2014, Little Rock Police reported 1,740 citations for DWI/DUI. Abilene, Texas, is a city with about 70,000 fewer people but cited more than 2,100 citations. Shreveport, Louisiana, has a population comparable to Little Rock, but it cited about 5,000 drunk drivers during that same time period. All four departments saw declines over the four-year period. 

 

“The fact that patrol is short, I think factors in,” Snook said of the differences. “Our entertainment district is a lot smaller than Shreveport, and it has 24/7 casinos, so I’m sure that makes a difference. And I think our lower numbers illustrate that what we do for deterrence is working.”

 

According to Snook, those smaller numbers don’t necessarily indicate the police department is slacking when it comes to catching drunk drivers. 

 

“Our citations amongst the squad are going up but  we’re still not raising DWI’s. Which tells me that we’re doing our job and keeping them home when they drink,” he said. “The lower numbers aren’t always a bad thing or a sign something is wrong. Ask any golfer, and they’ll tell you.” 

 

But obstacles to finding intoxicated operators are real, Snook said, with manpower being the front seat driver on enforcement. 

 

“Everybody knows right now we’re several dozen short in patrol. So there’s a lot of hopping call to call. In fact, here recently we found ourselves taking calls just to help out on patrol,” Snook said. 

 

Each of the three officers on the DWI Task Force is assigned to one of the city’s three divisions.

 

So, Fox16 Investigates mapped out where most drunk drivers are being cited in the city based on Little Rock court records. We plotted every arrest citation that included a complete address. You can see the entire map by clicking here. 

Fox16 Investigates notes that the addresses for all citations did not always include complete information. In a number of instances, arrest citations included arrest addresses that did not physically exist. There was also an absence of addresses for the majority of citations from 2015. The Administrative Office of the Courts, which maintains the database for digital information entered from DWI citations, noted it cannot capture information that is not entered. When we asked both LRPD and the Little Rock District Courts for their copies of the citations, they each referred Fox16 Investigates  to one another. 

 

With the data available, however, Fox16 Investigates identified corridors like Colonel Glenn, University and Cantrell that were all heavily dotted with DWI citations. 

 

“Each of those locations are thoroughfares where there are clubs they use to leave to go home. That’s probably pretty accurate,” Snook said. “We don’t post up and sit on the clubs, I don’t believe in that, but those are likely places where DWIs will occur, because that’s the route they’re taking to another major part of the city.” 

 

But certain areas barely had a marker on the map. The River Market, for instance, is well-known as Little Rock’s entertainment district. Yet, less than a dozen DWIs were cited in that area between 2010 and 2015, according to the data available.

 

Multiple sources, who asked not to be named due to fears of retribution, have told us that since River Market’s inception there has been a standing, if not official, order that DWI citations are to be avoided. Sources say it’s an understood policy from city management due to fears that DWI arrests would curb spending in the downtown area. 

 

“No, I have never heard anything like that,” Snook said when we asked about any such unofficial policy. “We can go in the River Market all we want. but it’s very well covered down there.”

 

According to Snook, foot patrols and on-duty officers are tasked with trying to keep River Market drinkers from every making it to motorist status.

 

“You just don’t let them get in the car,” he said. “If we find somebody down there getting in the car who is obviously intoxicated. It’s cut then. They keep a watch on that in parking lots for those drivers.”

 

But if somehow intoxicated drivers do slip by, officers intend to catch them in the feeder corridors they patrol, which can often be several miles down the stretch. 

 

“It’s trying to catch them as quick as we can from where you are,” Snook said. “We can’t read minds. We don’t know where they are going or where they are coming from. You just try to do the best you can on the main thoroughfares where you know they’re going to use “

 

Pamela Sell works for Mothers Against Drunk Driving, and she took a look at the data Fox16 Investigates collected. 

 

“It was obvious there were certain areas in the city that are getting fewer DWI stops and arrest being made,” she said. “That could be for a lot of reasons. You might have staffing issues. You might have some officers that are more gung-ho about catching drunk drivers, and you might have areas where they choose to enforce more heavily than they do others.” 

 

Sell concede enforcement might be hampered by staffing shortfalls, but she’s concerned to see areas virtually unrepresented on the map. 

 

“What those numbers show is that our roads and streets in our city are not as safe as they can be,” she said. “You do want to catch those drivers as soon as possible. The further they drive down the road, the more danger they pose to more people.” 

 

Little Rock Police had its first sobriety checkpoint in years around this latest holiday season. 

 

“We’re very supportive of LRPD of taking those measure, and we would support more of those measures across the city.  The River Market would be a perfect place for that to occur,” Sell said.

 

Those who frequent River Market admitted they were surprised there were so few DWIs written but added there’s at least the perception that a DWI is a possibility, despite just a dozen since 2010 and nearly everyone we spoke to saying they had seen drunk people leave River Market driving.

 

“There should be a lot more but at the same time, just that scare of getting one can be something of an influence, if not enough,” said Jerry Andrew, who formerly worked in the area.

 

Snook and his crew say they’re committed to continued patrols, and the unit has more plans for extra enforcement down the road. 

 

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Fox16 Investigates is committed to uncovering truth and problems people face across Arkansas. If you have a story that needs to be investigated, call Investigative Reporter Marci Manley on the Investigations Tipline at (501) 340-4448 or email at investigations@fox16.com