Teens: Don’t let the best weekend of your life be the last weekend of your life.
While Warren County High School seniors will be celebrating the end of their final year with prom night Friday, McMinnville Police Department is gearing up to help make it a safe one.
“We are going to do a saturation patrol for prom weekend,” said McMinnville Police Lt. Mark Mara. “This weekend will be about protecting teens as they celebrate.”
Officers will be attempting to make the roads safer due to the number of teens expected to be out this weekend.
“This is a perfect opportunity for us to encourage teens to not ride with impaired drivers,” said Mara. “Prom is one of those events where teenagers are trying to get rides to go places. Because of that, we want to try and make the roads safer. We’re also reminding them not to drive distracted. Pay attention to the roadway and get where you are going safety.”
This weekend’s saturation patrol came after one on the weekend of April 16. During that event, the department made 13 traffic stops. Of those stops, six tickets were issued. None of the drivers stopped were impaired.
Also effective was the Tennessee Highway Patrol’s checkpoint on Nashville Highway.
“We had 281 vehicles go through out checkpoint,” said Highway Patrol Sgt. Billy Prater. “Of that number, we detained 15 for various reasons. We searched one vehicle, made one felony arrest on a drug case, made two misdemeanor drug cases, cited three people for violation of registration law, cited two for driver’s license law violation, cited one for financial responsibility violation, and gave three other minor citations for a total of 12. I think one or two of those minor citations were wheel tax violation. There’s no category for those on our tally sheet.”
The state department also handed out 185 pieces of literature at its checkpoint regarding safety belts and driving under the influence.
“It was a very successful checkpoint,” said Prater. “We didn’t arrest any for DUI and we had no DUI-related crashes that night. It was a good night.”