6/11/09
Thanks to limited manpower and lopsided funding, summer drivers may encounter TV star Erik Estrada’s face more than those of actual New Mexico police officers.
In its $1.3 million budget for the 2009 “100 Days and Nights of Summer” campaign, the state Highway Department has budgeted more than twice as much for advertising as for actual law enforcement. It plans to spend $931,927 on advertising, with more than two-thirds of that amount earmarked for purchasing ad time and space on television, radio and print, according to Department spokeswoman Veronica Valencia. Estrada, the campaign’s spokesman, appeared in Espanola to kick off the campaign, and his face is seen on billboards, television ads and newsletters.
In comparison, the law-enforcement budget for the 100-day campaign is $414,452, the lowest it has been in the program’s three years of existence.
Like most highway-safety campaigns, the money for the 100 Days and Nights program comes from the federal government, through the federal Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
“We use federal money for almost everything we do on drunk driving,” state DWI Czar Rachel O’Connor said.
O’Connor said in allocating that funding, the state generally follows the Administration’s recommendation to couple public-awareness ad campaigns with actual enforcement.
But DWI Resource Center Executive Director Linda Atkinson said the two components are supposed to go hand in hand, with law enforcement as the top priority and advertising secondary. Yet Atkinson wasn’t surprised to hear about the state’s lopsided budget.
“They historically have put a lot into media,“ Atkinson said. “The (state) Traffic Safety Bureau gets grants from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and I think they still have not adjusted to the ruralness of our state, even though we’ve worked with them for 30,40 years. And so what they do is go, ‘Well, let’s reach people on TV and radio and print,’ rather than basically seeing the law enforcement at work out there.”
Calls to the Administration were not returned.
Atkinson said particularly in rural areas, the best way to effect change in people’s behavior is to put police out on the street.
“I tell you, what works better than anything is seeing traffic enforcement,“ Atkinson said. “You drive down the road, you see somebody pulled over, what do you do? You make sure your seatbelt’s on, you’re doing the speed limit, ‘cause you could be next. When you do a lot on publicity but you don’t see the law enforcement out on the street, you begin to say, ‘Maybe not so much.’ The thought of getting caught will diminish.”
O’Connor said the main factor limiting traffic enforcement efforts is not money, but manpower. When enforcement programs first began, the state suspected that arrests would continue to rise in step with increased enforcement efforts, so they tried to maximize funding for police, O‘Connor said.
“At a certain point, agencies start to max out in terms of what they have in personnel,” O’Connor said. “Somewhere around 20,000 (arrests), maybe a little higher, we start hearing back, ‘That’s more than we can do.’”
That may be true on a statewide level, but Rio Arriba police agencies are receiving only a few thousand dollars each through the 100 Days and Nights program.
State Police Capt. Daniel Lovato, whose district includes most of Rio Arriba County and all of Taos County, said with about 30 uniformed officers on his roster he is strapped for manpower, but he could always use more money to run checkpoints and saturation patrols.
“If we had it, we’d spend it,” Lovato said.
Lovato said State Police receives a lump sum statewide for 100 Days and Nights, which it divvies among districts. His District 7 office will receive $2,500 this year, Lovato said.
Lovato said it costs about $1,100 in overtime pay to run a highway checkpoint, which requires five off-duty officers and a supervisor. He will combine the 100 Days and Nights money with other year-round DWI and traffic enforcement funding to conduct 10 checkpoints throughout this summer’s campaign, Lovato said.
The Rio Arriba County Sheriff’s Department will receive about $5,000 through the 100 Days and Nights program, which is about the same as last year but less than in 2007, Sheriff’s Lt. Martin Trujillo said.
The Sheriff’s Department has three full-time dedicated DWI officers who work from 4 p.m. to midnight on weekdays and from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. on weekends. Trujillo said the Department will use the additional summer funding to pay overtime for additional saturation patrols and checkpoints. Trujillo estimated that each checkpoint costs the Department about $500 in overtime pay.
Sheriff’s deputy James Lujan said regular officers will also concentrate more heavily on DWI and other traffic enforcement during the summer. The Department is interviewing candidates and plans to hire five deputies, but it is perennially short on manpower because it can’t afford to pay a rate comparable to other agencies, Lujan said.
According to city of Espanola documents, the Espanola Police Department will receive up to $4,180 this year through the 100 Days and Nights of Summer campaign. Espanola Public Safety Chief Julian Gonzales did not return a call seeking comment.
Star Power
Lujan and Lt. Martin Trujillo said the statewide DWI advertising campaign does help, because police agencies are required to give advance publicity of sobriety checkpoints.
“At this point, they’re doing that,” Trujillo said.
Trujillo and Lujan also said they’ve seen some change in people’s attitudes, and an increased use of designated drivers. But for some drivers, added awareness may never change behavior, they said.
“When you catch them, they say, ‘You drink, you drive, you lose, I know,’” Lujan said.
Atkinson said since limited manpower for enforcement is an issue, she’d like to see the 100 Days and Nights program grants become competitive, tied to performance outcomes.
“It’s easy to say, ‘Well, we throw money at law enforcement and there just aren’t enough people,’” Atkinson said. “In a sense that’s true, but if you make it more competitive there are more law enforcement agencies that would be willing to take the money.”
As for Estrada, Atkinson laughed and said she hasn’t seen any evidence that his presence is effective in reducing drunk driving. Most of the highest-risk population for drunk and reckless driving, the 18 to 24 crowd, may not even have heard of Estrada, Atkinson said. She said in small communities, messages portraying local leaders — or local victims, like the DWI billboard that hangs on Highway 84/285 between Espanola and Pojoaque — are more effective.