

Chris Fox, CP24.com





Toronto police arrested 211 people for impaired driving over the course of their annual holiday RIDE check campaign, which equates to an eight per cent increase from the year before.

According to statistics released Monday, the Toronto Police Service made 211 arrests during this year’s holiday RIDE program, which ran from Nov. 19 to Jan. 3.

Over the same time period in 2014, police arrested 195 people for impaired driving offences.

“People are absolutely not getting the message,” Const. Clint Stibbe told CP24 on Monday. “We are talking about quite a large number (of arrests).”

Though impaired driving arrests were up over the holiday period, they were actually down overall in 2015 with police taking a total of 1,364 people into custody compared to the 1,371 that were arrested in 2014.

Stibbe, however, said the slight improvement of about half a percentage point is hardly a victory as plenty of drivers are still making the choice to drive while impaired.

“Cars have been out since the 1920s. How is it that in 95-odd years we haven’t gotten the message that impaired driving is wrong and dangerous? Common sense unfortunately is not prevailing.”

Statistics previously released by York Regional Police suggested that impaired driving charges in that jurisdiction were up six per cent in 2015 to about 1,800.

Ontario Provincial Police have not yet released statistics for their holiday RIDE campaign, however Sgt. Kerry Schmidt told CP24 on Monday that officers laid 31 impaired driving charges between 12:01 a.m. and 6 p.m. on Jan. 1.

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