Police officers’ hats lie on a coatrack as Joshua Clark, a 2007 MSU alumnus, speaks to a group of law enforcers and Mothers Against Drunk Driving members Friday afternoon in Lansing.
East Lansing police Chief Tom Wibert takes great pride in his department’s work on finding and arresting those who get behind the wheel while intoxicated.
“There is a narrow segment that just doesn’t get it,” Wibert said. “We want to give them a room without a view downtown.”
The department’s emphasis on keeping dangerous drivers off East Lansing roads earned it the Mothers Against Drunk Driving, Michigan Lifesaver Award.
Betty Mercer, a state operations council member for MADD of Michigan who presented the award to the department, said ELPD has been increasing its drunken driving arrests for the past four years, culminating in an 18-year high in 2008.
“They have changed the climate, making drunk driving unacceptable,” Mercer said.
Wibert said 81 percent of MSU students choose to use a designated driver rather than drive drunk, with 74 percent choosing not to drive after just one drink.
ELPD was the only full department recognized, but MADD also gave Lifesaver Awards to six individual officers from around the state.
The reception, held at the Causeway Bay Hotel, 6820 S. Cedar St., in Lansing, was highlighted by a speech from a victim of drunken driving within the MSU community.
Josh Clark, who graduated from MSU in 2007, was hit by a drunken driver in 2000 while he was passing through a green light. Clark said he wore a seat belt but the vehicle hit him so hard he ended up lying on the floor of the passenger side.
Because of the extent of his injuries and brain damage, doctors prepared Clark’s family for his death.
“The first people my parents saw when they came into the hospital was a pastor,” Clark said. “Meanwhile, I was in surgery having my windshield removed from my face.”
Clark pulled through, but it took several years to recover to the point where he could enroll at MSU.
Clark thanked the ELPD and the other officers for their work. He said it was vital that all levels of law enforcement work to eliminate drunken driving and prevent more life-changing crashes like his.
“Next time you pull over a drunk driver, just know that you’re preventing another family like mine from getting that phone call,” he told the officers.
Wibert told the assembled officers and their families, along with members of MADD from across Michigan, that his department won’t stop working to put an end to drunken driving in East Lansing.
“This cause is right,” he said. “It is our cause and we’re going to keep going.”
ELPD awarded MADD Lifesaver Award
Support student media! Please consider donating to The State News and help fund the future of journalism.
