State Police Step Up Patrols

State Police are making sure every body’s safe on the roads Sunday night into Monday morning. Every year, they step up patrols, looking for drunk drivers from Super Bowl parties. But, they say people are getting smart and avoiding the main roads, where they know police are watching.

“They know we’re gonna be out there so they use the back roads and the side roads and a lot of times will avoid the mainstream highways, such as the Interstate, so a lot of times we’ll have to travel off road to go in search of those people,“ said Sgt. Matthew Brannock.

State police say they won’t have any check points. Instead, they’ll use what they call saturation patrols, which lets them move around more.

“That allows us to cover more terrain and more territory because we’re mobile, whereas a checkpoint itself has us stationary and we only observe the traffic coming through the checkpoint itself,“ Sgt. Brannock said.

And even those who aren’t normally working will be on the lookout.

“Around metropolitan areas, we will have more projects that allow for more troopers to come out and work their off-time to become more vigilant,“ he said.

And they’ll continue to be, hours after the final score.

“That usually stretches on in through the night, and I know tomorrow being Monday, that a lot of people are going to have to focus on going home and getting ready for bed and getting up the morning to go to work.“

And for those of you who aren’t drinking alcohol…

“If they worry about their driving and to focus on their driving, we’ll worry about everybody else,“ Sgt. Brannock said.