MEXICO — Local police have been awarded a grant through the Bureau of Highway Safety to combat impaired driving, Lt. Roy Hodsdon said.
Hodsdon said the Drive Sober Maine! is offered to any department that is able to justify and prove their need for additional help in stopping impaired driving. It consists of $9,200 that each department can use as they see fit.
Carl Hallman, safety coordinator at the Bureau of Highway Safety, said the grant begins Dec. 1 and lasts until Sept. 6, 2013. It will require each department to participate in a “national drunk driving crackdown effort” around Christmas and again in September, around Labor Day.
“We try and crack down on impaired driving during these two time periods,” Hallman said, with Hodsdon agreeing that Christmas is a busy time in terms of drunk driving.
Hallman added, “It’s up to each department to use the rest of the money as they see fit over the nine months that the grant lasts.”
Hodsdon said that one benefit of having the grant is that the Mexico Police Department can team up with other agencies with grant money and do roadblocks.
“I know that Rumford got the grant as well,” Hodsdon said. “If we needed to, we could team up for an operation.”
Hallman said that as of Wednesday afternoon, the Bureau of Highway Safety had 45 different agencies participating in the grant program and that the application for it closed a couple weeks ago. He said that the Maine State Police Department is also involved in the grant program.
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