Dec. 03--GUILDERLAND -- Five people were booted from a court-ordered victim-impact panel earlier this week after showing up with booze in their system, three of them legally drunk, acting Sheriff Craig Apple said.
The five were caught Tuesday when they showed up for the panel, which forces people convicted of drug- or alcohol-related driving offenses to listen to speakers whose loved ones have been killed or injured by drunken drivers.
The sheriff's office said the five were tested after volunteers detected an odor of alcohol.
Three people registered blood-alcohol levels above the 0.08 percent legal limit for driving -- 0.18 percent, 0.11 percent and 0.09 percent -- while two were under it at 0.03 percent and 0.01 percent.
Legally drunk or not, all five were booted from the forum, which is part of their court-imposed sentences. They were not charged with new crimes because all five had been dropped off at the program at Guilderland Town Hall by friends or family, the sheriff said.
"I don't even know what to say about it. It's frustrating," Apple said. "The only saving grace for these idiots is that they weren't driving. ... We're trying to drive home the effects (of drunken driving), and these people aren't taking it seriously."
Apple said he plans to take up the issue with local judges in hopes of putting more teeth in the program, which he said often isn't taken seriously enough by those ordered into it.
Two other attendees -- out of a total of 140 -- were ejected for either sleeping or not paying attention, Apple said.
Boosting the strength of the victim-impact program, which Apple said was the first in the state when it was created in 1984, is part of a larger re-invention of the county's Stop-DWI Program, which is now overseen by Lt. Kerry Thompson.
Last month, Apple ended the county's long-time policy of announcing DWI sweeps ahead of time, favoring instead surprise crackdowns.
After the first such sweep over the Halloween weekend, police said they made twice as many DWI arrests as they did in a similar crackdown in 2010 -- despite stopping half as many cars.
The Stop-DWI unit's previous administrator, Sgt. Leonard Crouch, was fired in July amid an investigation into whether he encouraged the program's victims' coordinator, Erin Loffredo, to log a fraudulent address on her employment forms to skirt the county's residency requirement. Loffredo also was later fired.
"We're trying to be as aggressive as possible," Apple said.
Reach Jordan Carleo-Evangelist at 454-5445, [email protected] or on Twitter @JCEvangelist_TU
Copyright 2011 - Times Union, Albany, N.Y.
