Lakeville Police Chief: Snow During Rush Hour Makes For Busy Day

The past few weeks of February, it has seemed to snow almost every day. While we have not had any huge snowstorms yet, a couple of inches of snow can make the commute difficult for motorists and a very busy day for the patrol officers working. That was the case last Friday morning when Sergeant John Kornmann’s patrol team was on duty and the strong wind created near blizzard conditions. Sergeant Kornmann’s daily shift notes indicated:

“Officers worked nine crashes or assists to the State Patrol on I-35 before noon. I-35 was a mess from 0730 until about 1100 a. m. One person was injured after the driver lost control of her Ford and her vehicle rear ended a semi. The actual number was much higher than nine incidents as we aided State Patrol with getting many cars back on the road through the morning.” 

In addition to all the weather related traffic incidents the officers responded to the normal range of dayshift calls including: investigating a residential burglary, making arrests at two retail stores for theft, and locating a suicidal individual, who was placed in a hospital on a psychiatric evaluation hold. 

MADD AWARD CEREMONY

This past Monday, February 25, the Minnesota MADD organization held their Minnesota Statewide Recognition Awards ceremony at the Minnesota Science Museum in St. Paul to announce their 2012 award recipients. As part of their work to end drunk and impaired driving incidents in our state, MADD issues awards to Minnesota law enforcement officers recognizing their work in reducing drunk and impaired driving incidents through enforcement and education and prevention methods. 

MADD nominates police officers in a number of categories including School Resource Officer of the Year, Outstanding Service Award (officer’s exceptional efforts in DUI enforcement), and the Tom Keating Award. 

This year the Lakeville Police Department was honored to have not one, but two of our officers recognized for their work in reducing incidents of impaired driving and underage drinking by youth in 2012. Officer Adam Stier was nominated by MADD for his remarkable DUI enforcement efforts in 2012 for the Outstanding Service Awards. Adam was responsible for 81 DUI arrests in 2012 and worked for part of the year as the Traffic Enforcement Officer. Because of the high likelihood of an impaired driver causing a serious traffic crash, we view each DUI arrest as a potential tragedy averted on our roadways. 

Lakeville North High School Resource Officer Andy Hentges received the 2012 MADD School Resource Officer of the Year Award at the ceremony. LNHS School Counselor Lisa Holien nominated SRO Hentges for his outstanding work with the students at Lakeville North High School in 2012 in raising their awareness of the dangers of alcohol and drug use. 

Both Officer Adam Stier and SRO Andy Hentges contributed greatly this past year to the LPD three pronged approach to limit alcohol access and use by underage persons with a “zero tolerance” enforcement policy, multiple proactive education efforts, and effective controls at point-of-sale for alcohol through specialized training for point-of sale-employees of liquor license holders. 

WEEKLY LPD SNAPSHOT

Sampling of LPD activity for the week of Feb. 20 to Feb. 27, 2013

Traffic crashes: 8 Alarms: 23 Animal Calls: 25 Medical Emergency Calls: 26 Thefts: 27 Traffic Stops: 150.