It’s the first week of January, so Happy New Year to all of you – I’m looking forward to a good year and a safe one.
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New Year’s Eve saw mostly good behaviour throughout the command, so I commend everyone for that.
Unfortunately, there were a few assaults, and a rise in domestic violence incidents, which is common at what is sometimes an emotional time of year.
But overall it was a good night, and I hope everyone enjoyed themselves.
Over the Christmas-New Year period, we were pushing hard on Operation Safe Arrival. It wound up on January 2 after 18 days.
During that time, we conducted almost 20,000 random breath tests, just within the Hume command.
From those tests, 203 people were charged with driving under influence of alcohol.
That’s a pretty small percentage but it’s still too many, and we’re glad we got them off our roads.
Region-wide, there were too many people killed – it was a terrible period, with 28 deaths across the state. That is double the number of deaths in the same period last year.
It’s always disappointing when we lose a life on our roads – each road death is a tragedy for a family and a community.
Over that time, we had every available resource out and about, with highway patrols and RBTs all over the place.
There’s only so much we can do. It gets frustrating that we drive home the message every way we can, and have officers covering the area, but people still make poor decisions.
Once again, I ask you, abide by the rules and don’t put your own and others’ lives in danger.