EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. — When Eden Prairie Patrol Officer Chad Streiff hits the roads shortly after 6 p.m. each shift, he often finds his mind drifting back in time about 15 years – to the day he lost a friend and attended the funeral with a grieving family.
“2005. He died of an impaired driving crash, that he caused. He was impaired, and rolled his vehicle before he was ejected,” Streiff said. “Watching his son have to say goodbye to his father… it’s heart-wrenching.”
The tragedy sparked Streiff’s interest in DWI enforcement when he became a police officer a few years later, embarking on a career that would eventually take him to the Twin Cities suburb of Eden Prairie.
This January, Streiff moved full-time to impaired driving enforcement in the Eden Prairie Police Department, through a state-funded grant position.
“When I first got into this line of work, I found myself enforcing this a little heavier … I started seeking it out, heard of crashes, family members losing loved ones,” Streiff said. “I decided I was going to try to do my part in preventing that.”
A few weekends ago, in mid-August, Streiff experienced one of the busiest shifts of his career in terms of impaired driving. After making a DWI stop about an hour after his shifted started near Highway 62, he made two more arrests around Highway 212, and then made two more in the area of Flying Cloud Drive. In total, he processed five suspects for drunk or drugged driving, including one person who was allegedly smoking marijuana and another underage person with an open alcohol bottle inside the car.
“That is my record, yes,” Streiff said, acknowledging the seriousness of the matter. “It just shows the problem is still here. We still have a significant problem with it.”
Law enforcement agencies across Minnesota have stepped up their DWI enforcement over the past few weeks, during a campaign that runs through Labor Day.
Notably, DWI arrests in 2020 have dropped by about 17.5% compared to this time last year, partly due to lighter traffic on the road during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, since the economy slowly began to re-open in June, the numbers of arrests have started to increase again – topping 2,000 in both July and August.
The number of arrests during the past two months still declined by 17% and 10%, respectively, compared to 2019, according to state data.
“Yeah, there’s gonna be a dip in the numbers, but it still shows there’s a lot of people still not caring much about public safety,” Streiff said. “If you’re impaired in any way, just don’t take that chance … It could cost somebody their life, it could cost your life, and it’s just not worth it.”