Three Kimberley RCMP officers were recognized, after the trio were responsible for removing over 100 impaired drivers from the roadways in and around Kimberley B.C. last year.
Cst. Dylan Cross, Cst. Gordon Skulnec and Cst. Scott Payne were each welcomed to the Alexa’s Team for their dedication to road safety, by reducing the number of drug and alcohol impaired drivers on the roads in our communities.
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The Alexa’s Team award pays tribute to the dedicated police officers who make an extraordinary contribution to reducing the number of drivers affected by alcohol or drugs on British Columbia municipal roads and provincial highways.
As part of National Impaired Driving Day, which takes place this year on Saturday December 7th, the Kimberley RCMP Detachment Commander, Sgt. Chris Newel, wishes to recognize each of these officers for their outstanding achievements. “I am very proud of these officers and their commitment to improving road safety in and around Kimberley,” states Sgt. Newel.
The Alexa’s Bus program was borne from tragedy which led to a collaborative effort between government, police, communities and the Middelaer family whose 4 year old daughter Alexa was killed by an impaired driver as she stood beside a road feeding a horse in May, 2008.
In 2010, the Middelaer’s (Laurel and Michael) challenged the RCMP, Municipal Police Agencies, and the Ministry of the Attorney General for British Columbia to reduce the number of deaths caused by alcohol impaired driving by 35 per cent by the end of 2013, the year Alexa would have turned 10-years old. They began a fundraising campaign to purchase a state-of-the-art Mobile Road Safety Unit (MRSU), known as “Alexa’s Bus,” designed to provide all police forces in BC a platform for alcohol and drug-impaired driving investigations.
The Alexa’s Bus program is the first of its kind in British Columbia and is one of several Traffic Services programs managed by the province’s Integrated Road Safety Unit. Alexa’s Bus is a fully contained police detachment on wheels that deploys to events throughout the province and has four important purposes:
• Enforcement: A tool for police officers to conduct impaired driving investigations at a road-check without leaving the scene;
• Educational: A presence at schools and major events where the public can tour the bus, talk to police officers about the effects of impaired driving, and see how we conduct investigations;
• Awareness: The bus is a 33-foot purple billboard that is unique in appearance designed to get the public to think twice about impaired driving and recognize that police are getting impaired drivers off the road; and
• Mobile Command Post: The bus may serve as a temporary base of operations for police at or near major events which may occur anywhere in BC. Such events may include: music festivals, disaster response, and/or major or extended-deployment emergency response.
Impaired driving is still one of the leading causes of fatal collisions in BC. In the years since the Middelaer’s issued their challenge, police in BC have removed nearly 100,000 impaired drivers from our roads.
Police throughout the province continue to deliver on their promise to Alexa’s family by removing impaired drivers from our roads and reducing the number of impaired driving fatalities in BC. Every police officer who removes 12 or more impaired drivers a year from the road joins “Alexa’s Team”.
carolyn.grant@kimberleybulletin.com
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