Park Service traffic safety campaign nets 26 arrests

VAN BUREN — National Park Service rangers made more than 250 traffic stops during a recent special traffic safety campaign and arrested 26 people, including 16 for DWI.

Six-man teams worked eight shifts between Aug. 21 and Labor Day “doing strictly traffic enforcement,” explained National Park Service Ranger Daniel Newberry.

The shifts were “evenly spread out” in the Ozark National Scenic Riverways — the lower Current River at Van Buren, the upper Current River at Eminence and in “the middle,” Newberry said.

The rangers, he said, saturated the highways where “people would be taking out of the boat ramp accesses; we worked the campgrounds. … We would work, the average shift would be from 3:30 (p.m.) to midnight.

“That’s when the heaviest flow was coming off the river.”

During the operation, sponsored by the National Highway Transportation Administration, the rangers made 252 traffic stops/contacts, Newberry said.

Of those stops, 138 resulted in traffic citations or criminal charges, along with 262 documented warnings being issued.

Newberry said the rangers made 26 arrests — 11 felony and 15 misdemeanor, including six for warrants and 16 for DWI.

A lot of the DWIs, Newberry said, were suspected of being a combination of drugs and alcohol.

There also were 74 incidents involving possession of a controlled substance, Newberry said.

“We had more felons with guns and stolen guns than I would ever have thought,” Newberry explained. “We had maybe four felons in possession of firearms, and I think three stolen guns.”

Newberry said rangers also were involved in a pursuit, where a man on an all-terrain vehicle “ran from us … He drove through the river, then hit a tree on the other side of the river.”

Newberry described the traffic as heavy, but “for actual summer, it was lighter. … We’re rocking and rolling hard in May, June and July.

“We start declining in visitation at about July 4.”

Since the saturations didn’t occur until late August, “our visitation is 50% compared to what it is in June and July,” Newberry said.

The park’s rangers, Newberry said, were assisted by a couple of trainees just out of the academy.

Newberry said funding from the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center paid for the trainee and the trainer’s overtime, which “freed up overtime for the park to be able to cover the shifts” of the other rangers.

The trainees, Newberry said, helped do a lot of the “heavy lifting.”

Although not “used to seeing what a drunk driver looks like, they had trainers helping them,” Newberry said.