Police launch holiday season check stop campaign

At a press conference on Monday, the Saskatoon Police Service announced the start of their holiday check stop campaign to crack down on impaired driving.

According to staff sargeant Patrick Barbar, the SPS has conducted 32 check stops already this year and have six more planned before New Year’s Eve.

“During the Christmas holiday season in December it is traditional for police services to put on additional check stops,” said Barbar.

“Because of the festive nature of the season, the risks associated with impaired driving increase quite dramatically and as a police service we are committed to keeping the holidays safe for everyone on our roads.”

Barbar said despite different impairment symptoms for alcohol and cannabis, it doesn’t change how they look for impaired drivers on the roads.

“We are looking for anything that moves away from the norm,” he said.

“It could be fast driving, it could be slow driving, it could be weaving in and out of lanes. These are things that are common to all forms of impairment.”

According to Barbar, at the check stops officers are within their rights to test drivers for both alcohol and cannabis even if there is no reasonable suspicion to assume the driver is impaired.

For their campaign the police are partnered with SGI which is providing “holiday treats” in the form of coffee cards that officers will be handing out at check stops to sober drivers.

“Nobody wants to remember this holiday season, or any other, as the one where you got an impaired driving charge or the one where someone got injured or somebody lost their life,” said Tyler McMurchy, manager of media relations for SGI.

“It’s a time of making the right kind of memories not the tragic kind of memories.”