Which suburban towns have most DUI arrests

Twenty-nine years ago, rookie police officer David Dial handled his first DUI crash.

A car driven by a drunken driver in heavy rains hydroplaned into oncoming traffic, careening into a Volkswagen carrying a toddler, who crashed through the front windshield.

“I’ll never forget that,” said Dial, now Naperville police chief. “My son was the age of the baby. I was a young patrol officer and a young father — I immediately sensed what had happened.”

Naperville ranked second among Illinois municipalities for driving under the influence of alcohol arrests in 2010, according to a study released Tuesday by the Alliance Against Intoxicated Motorists.

Leading the pack was Rockford with 727 arrests to Naperville’s 671. Also in the top 10 were Elgin with 410 arrests, Waukegan with 390, Carol Stream with 361, Elmhurst with 318 and Aurora with 296. The numbers do not include Chicago results.

AAIM Executive Director Charlene Chapman said the study is not so much an indication of how many drunken drivers there are in a town as to how active police enforcement is.

“When police chiefs make it a priority to get impaired drivers off the roads, lots of arrests are made,” Chapman said in a statement. “There are several individuals making more DUI arrests per year than many entire police departments in Illinois.”

The suburbs continue to be a problem area for drunken driving with limited public transit and people dependent on their cars for transportation, experts said.

But even in downtown Naperville where taxis line up eager for business, drivers who’ve had too much still get behind the wheel. “There are opportunities but people disregard them,” Dial said.

There’s no typical drunken driver but many of those arrested in Naperville in 2010 were older than 21 and well over the .08 blood-alcohol-content limit, Dial said.

Arterial roads such as Route 20 with faster speed limits contribute to the severity of drunken driving crashes and that’s one reason his department takes a preventive approach, Elgin Police Chief Jeffrey Swoboda said.

“We see such devastation that’s completely avoidable,” Swoboda said. “Part of being vigilant is to proactively do enforcement on all types of violations.” Often a traffic stop for speeding or driving without headlights can lead to a drunken-driving arrest, he said.

The survey found that in Chicago, drunken driving arrests dropped from 4,341 in 2009 to 3,695 in 2010. Illinois State Police DUI stops went up by 7.4 percent with 10,734 last year compared to 9,996 in 2009.

Cook County sheriff’s police led county departments with 515 arrests, followed by Lake with 393, DeKalb with 327 and Will with 267.