BY JAMES D. WOLF JR. , POST-TRIBUNE CORRESPONDENT
VALPARAISO — In the midst of the holiday season, Porter County law enforcement on Thursday recognized the officers making the roads safer.
The Drunk Driving Task Force, at its fourth annual awards banquet, acknowledged the officers who made most of the 926 drunken driving arrests in the county from November 2008 to October.
That total has gone down from 1,148 arrests last year and 1,260 the year before, “which I hope is a good thing,” said Sgt. Mike Grennes of the Valparaiso Police Department. It might mean the word is getting out, he said.
Police forces having the highest “operating while intoxicated” arrest rate this year are Portage Police Department with 296, Porter County Sheriff’s Department with 198 and Valparaiso Police Department with 131.
For the fourth consecutive year, Officer Michael Candiano of Portage made the most OWI arrests by a single officer, a total of 67. That’s down from the 73 arrests made from November 2007 through October 2008 and the 113 from the previous year. Candiano said on each of his midnight shifts, he tries to find a drunken driver.
“People think it’s just a weekend problem, but it’s not,” he said.
It’s become a passion for him because he lost a high school friend to a drunken driver, and in his rookie year, he saw a dispatcher killed.
“I saw it at the very beginning and how it trickled down through lives,” he said.
The second highest OWI arrests were by Officer Brian Gill of the Sheriff’s Department. He had 46 arrests during his night shifts.
“Most of them find me,” he said.
Many fall asleep at traffic lights and train crossings. Gill’s father was hit by a drunken driver about five years ago, which meant hospital stays, surgeries and a year away from work.
Officer Anthony Dandurand of the Hebron Police Department’s night shift made 40 OWI arrests, which put him in third.