10:05 p.m.: Police Station

Sgt. Butch Hohman walked into the briefing room of the St. Robert Police Department at 10:05 p.m. Saturday. Like most police departments, St. Robert beefs up its uniformed presence at nights and on weekends, but far more people than usual were gathered in front of him as he leaned against a table and podium. More than a half-dozen police officers and volunteers from Mark Twain REACT came for the nightly briefing, while additional police officers prepared for their ordinary duties.
St. Robert has the largest police force in Pulaski County, but it’s not capable of fielding that many officers on an ordinary night. Officer overtime on Saturday was paid out of special funds appropriated statewide by the Missouri State Highway Patrol for drunk driving enforcement on the Cinco de Mayo holiday weekend.
Most local officers are used to St. Robert’s periodic drunk driving checkpoints that shut down a major city street to make sure drivers aren’t intoxicated. However, Hohman told the officers sitting before him that they shouldn’t accept any excuses and would be taking a stiff stance.
“We’re not going to play with them this time,” Hohman said. “Every car that goes through gets checked; every violation you see gets a ticket. If there’s a driver without a seat belt, they get a ticket. If there’s a front seat passenger without a seat belt, they get a ticket.”
“Run everybody; check everything. We don’t know what we’ll find,” Hohman said.
Hohman passed out special reflective vests to police officers as well as the orange-suited volunteers from Mark Twain REACT and told his officers that they’ll have about half an hour to get coffee, snacks, or whatever else they’ll need to stay alert for the next few hours of the checkpoint. Some drove out to get coffee; others gathered around the desk of an officer who had recently shot a deer and cooked venison for his colleagues.
Hohman had a final warning for his officers: make sure to wear reflective vests at all times, use special red flashlights to direct drivers, and be careful of traffic.
“I don’t want anybody run over, I don’t want anybody hit, I don’t want anybody hurt,” Hohman said. “I’ll shut down the checkpoint if I have to for officer safety.”

10:27 p.m.: Firefighter briefing
It’s 10:27 p.m. and Fire Engineer Tom Dickey is giving his own briefing to the St. Robert firefighters participating in the drunk driving enforcement checkpoint.
St. Robert police hardly ever need to light up a building at night, but that’s a common problem when fighting fires after dark. At the request of the police, St. Robert firefighters drove a fire truck to Reed Park, located next to the Missouri Department of Transportation road shed between the eastbound and westbound lanes of Old Route 66, and set up mobile lights that when turned on will fully illuminate several dozen yards of the eastbound lane. Firefighters used flashlights to set up signs announcing a checkpoint ahead.
The speed limit is 45 mph and most motorists rush by too quickly to see the unlit signs, each of which is turned backwards so the message on the sign can’t be seen by motorists — yet.
Once turned around, motorists will see three signs. The first has text announcing “Sobriety Checkpoint Ahead,” the second has a picture of a flagman directing traffic, and the third is a portable stop sign.
Dickey helped firefighters set up electric generators to power the floodlights and cautioned firefighters to position the lights in such a way that they’ll illuminate the cars from the rear rather than blinding drivers or officers. Firefighters carefully placed electric cords in the grass alongside the road in locations where neither firefighters nor officers could trip over the cords; other firefighters back at their fire engine directed floodlights mounted on the engine toward a parking lot where suspected drunks and their vehicles will be taken for processing.
The firefighters aren’t there just to string lighting. Dickey cautioned his colleagues on the fire department that not everyone they’ll meet will be happy to interact with police, and he gave specific directions on how to make sure an officer isn’t left without backup if a motorist begins to cause problems.
“If the officer needs assistance, you’re there to help,” Dickey said.
Firefighter Josh Hall agreed.
“There are some crazy people out there,” Hall said.

10:46 p.m.: Setting up
Hohman has served in the St. Robert Police Department for decades and is among the longest-serving officers on the force. He knows his city’s streets by heart, and remembers the days decades ago when shootouts and wild chases down city streets were typical weekend fare in St. Robert — days when police manpower was vastly outnumbered at some crime scenes by criminals with guns.
Hohman has taken many precautions to make sure that won’t happen at one of his police checkpoints, especially since a car or pickup weighs thousands of pounds and can be a potent weapon. At 10:46 p.m., he’s walking up and down the sides of Old Route 66 making sure all the floodlights are in the right place to illuminate the checkpoint and make sure there are no dark corners where a passenger or driver could escape unnoticed. Drivers will be forced to slow down by several cars backed up at least one or two deep to keep anyone from ramming through the checkpoint, and warning signs are placed far enough away that drivers will be noticed if they don’t slow down well in advance.
As Hohman walked back to the main entrance to Reed Park, he gave directions to another police officer to park a patrol car with a camera so the events at the checkpoint will be captured on camera, and gave directions to firefighters to adjust the lights to provide adequate illumination.
“We’re going to record all of it; it’s all going to be on video,” Hohman said.
Dickey related those lighting directions to his firefighters.
“Just keep an eye on those lights,” Dickey said. “We’re all about looking out for officer safety when they’re out here tonight.”

10:50 p.m.: In the shadows
Shortly after 10:46 p.m., Hohman gave a signal and Reed Park erupted in a blaze of lights. Officers, firefighters, and volunteers from Mark Twain REACT turned around fluorescent signs and began to direct traffic to slow down and stop for conversations with the officers.
However, not all of Reed Park was lit up.
Farther back in the shadows, Stephen Gray, a Fort Leonard Wood staff sergeant who volunteers with Mark Twain REACT, parked his pickup in a crossover between the eastbound and westbound lanes. No one will get through that crossover tonight, which means by the time drivers see the stopped cars for the checkpoint ahead of them, it’s too late to evade the police. And because the pickup is in the shadows, eastbound drivers won’t get an advance warning of the checkpoint in time to get off the road in some other direction.
The police and many of the firefighters are being paid for their work, but that’s not the case for Gray, who volunteered his time.
“I love to help the local police departments cut down on drinking and driving,” Gray said. “We come out here, help them, and make sure no one can get around the checkpoint … If they try to go around, we will block them and force them to go through it.”
Many of the people driving past Gray’s darkened pickup have been enjoying a Saturday night of fun and enjoyment. Gray said he’s having fun, too.
“I love it,” Gray said. “I’ve enjoyed what police departments do and wanted to do it since I was a kid.”

11:07 p.m.: Questions, questions
It’s 11:07 p.m. and the checkpoint has begun in earnest. Officers and firefighters have completely shut down the eastbound lane of Old Route 66 and cars are backed up two, three, and sometimes four deep in each lane as officers ask each driver a few questions.
“Evening, Ma’am — where are you coming from tonight?” one officer asks a driver.
In the other lane, an officer patiently waits while a driver fumbles with the paperwork in her car to find her vehicle registration.
Back in the first lane, the officer has encountered a driver who seems slightly nervous, and after the driver hands over his license, she does a quick test to see if the driver’s eyes can follow the license as she moves it from side to side. He’s still a bit hesitant, so the officer asks him to take a preliminary breath test by blowing into a device that measures the alcohol content of his breath. The driver agrees, the machine shows he’s not intoxicated, and the officer lets him continue on his way.
Hohman’s direction was that everybody gets stopped, with no exceptions. That includes Harold Burleson, the retired regimental command sergeant major of the Army’s Military Police Corps, who was driving back from a church conference.
Burleson was the top enlisted MP in the Army until he retired eight years ago, and he’s conducted numerous drunk driving checkpoints during his career as a military policeman.
“The officer was very courteous; he had no idea who I was and I’m sure he treated everybody else the same way he treated me,” Burleson said. “I felt pretty good that they’re conducting these traffic enforcement actions.”
Checkpoint promote traffic safety because they take drunks off the road, Burleson said, and they’re worth a few minutes of inconvenience.
“The biggest benefit of these checkpoints is to ensure we have safety on our roads,” Burleson said.

11:14 p.m.: The night’s first ticket
Saturday night traffic is light in St. Robert and most drivers get through the checkpoint in a few minutes, including the time spent waiting for the cars ahead. But by 11:14 p.m., officers have written their first citation after pulling over a cab from Inner City Cab.
Hohman said he can’t release the specific offense for which the ticket was written, but said it’s not serious and was likely a seat belt violation.
“If it’s alcohol related, they won’t be driving away,” Hohman said. “We take them over to the police car and a firefighter takes their vehicle and parks it in the lot.”
St. Robert officers wrote their first driving-while-intoxicated citation at 11:35 p.m.; firefighters followed procedures and parked the driver’s car while Officer Holly Wiseman led him toward a patrol car in the Reed Park parking lot.
“Who’s that guy taking pictures?” the arrested man shouted out as he was led toward the patrol car.
Some drivers tried a different means to evade the checkpoint. At 11:41 p.m., Mark Twain REACT volunteers reported that a vehicle had pulled into the parking lot of St. Robert Bellarmine Catholic Church and was parked next to some trees. A driver and a passenger got out of the car and walked away from their pickup.
After receiving a call on his radio asking what to do, Hohman laughed briefly. Some drivers try that tactic each time the checkpoint is set up, but it doesn’t work — even pedestrians have nowhere to go once they leave the church and will be intercepted by volunteers and brought back to the checkpoint. In the meantime, Mark Twain REACT volunteers called in the license plate on their pickup to determine its owner.

11:50 p.m.: Who’s drunk, the driver or passenger?
Sgt. Hohman, Officer Wiseman and Officer Chris Taylor ask a series of standard questions to each driver, calculated to see how coherently they respond to questions and whether there’s alcohol on their breath. One driver in white-tie formal attire was on his way back from the Waynesville High School prom and was encouraged to return home quickly before the terms of his intermediate driver’s license would keep him from being legally on the road. Several people received citations for not having their seat belts buckled. Many drivers said they were coming back from the movie theater in Waynesville, from O.B.’s Billiards, or from the Twilite Zone nightclub.
As the night goes on, many drivers are coherent and sober but their passengers aren’t. Officers more and more frequently ask to administer breath tests since it’s not always clear whether the alcohol smell in the car is coming from the driver or a passenger.
Shortly before midnight, Hohman found a marginal driver who isn’t at the legal limit of 0.08 percent alcohol content, but close. Even though Hohman couldn’t arrest her, he decided she shouldn’t be on the road driving since she could be a danger to herself or others.
“She’s not quite (intoxicated) enough to make a case, so I’m going to have her park the vehicle and have someone pick her up,” Hohman said.
The driver consented, exited her car, and a firefighter took the vehicle to Reed Park for safekeeping.
Hohman said he’d rather be safe than sorry. He can’t arrest someone who isn’t at the legal limit for intoxication, but he can advise drivers not to take a risk.
With a street full of uniformed officers and firefighters, most drivers don’t ignore well-meant advice.

12:08 a.m.: Lie to police, go to jail
Most, but not all.
Rumors spread quickly in a small town where young people carry cell phones, and many partygoers in St. Robert learned about the checkpoint not long after it began. However, nightclubs don’t want to deal with drunk drivers or intoxicated juveniles any more than the police — bars and nightclubs that knowingly serve minors or continue to serve people who are obviously incapable of driving could lose their liquor licenses. Shortly before midnight, police dispatchers received a call from the management of a local nightclub to be on the lookout for a blue Dodge Neon that had left their establishment with underage partygoers drinking open containers of alcohol in the passenger compartment.
At 12:08 p.m., Wiseman intercepted the Dodge Neon with five excited young people. All denied having any open container of alcohol in the passenger compartment, so Wiseman asked for the driver’s licenses of everyone in the car.
Pointing to a female passenger in the back, Wiseman asked if she’d been drinking. The passenger denied it.
“So if I give you a breath test you’ll pass it perfectly?” Wiseman asked.
The passenger agreed to take a breath test — and as Wiseman expected, it showed the underage passenger had been drinking.
The night of fun ended quickly for that passenger, who was ordered to put her hands behind her back as Wiseman handcuffed her and let her to a patrol car.
“Why are you lying to me by saying you haven’t been drinking?” Wiseman said. “You pissed me off really bad by lying about drinking, so you’re going to jail.”
By the end of the night, Hohman reported that 11 drivers had been arrested and charged with driving while intoxicated. One driver was arrested for driving while his license was revoked and for having a felony warrant; one driver was arrested for being a minor in possession of an alcoholic substance. A total of 331 drivers were stopped during the checkpoint.

Monday: Report to City Council
That’s many more arrests than Police Chief Curtis Curenton expected. At Monday night’s city council meeting, he thanked his officers and firefighters but warned that St. Robert had more arrests than the far larger city of Springfield on the same night with the same traffic enforcement program.
“Just for comparison, in Greene County they stopped 1,200 vehicles and had only eight arrests,” Curenton told city aldermen. “I can’t remember us ever having this many DWI arrests in the past.”
That’s a dangerous trend, Curenton said, and one St. Robert officers plan to monitor carefully. Curenton said he hopes aggressive enforcement of alcohol laws in St. Robert will keep the city from having large numbers of intoxicated drivers on its roads who cause crashes that injure themselves or others on the road.