Crime & Safety
Portage County Will Be Site of Sobriety Checkpoint Saturday
Ohio State Highway Patrol will announce exact location in the morning.
Portage County will be the location of an OVI checkpoint sometime Saturday evening – St. Patrick's Day – the Ohio State Highway Patrol announced today.
The patrol issued a release earlier this week warning that the sobriety checkpoint would be set up somewhere within the next week at an undetermined location.
The exact location of the checkpoint will not be announced until Saturday morning.
Lt. Michael Marucci, commander of the Ravenna Post, said the OVI checkpoint, funded by federal grant funds, is planned to deter and intercept impaired drivers.
"Based on provisional data, there were 332 OVI-related fatal crashes in which 359 people were killed last year and 7,507 injured in Ohio," Marucci said.
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"State troopers make on average 25,000 OVI arrests each year in an attempt to combat these dangerous drivers. OVI checkpoints are designed to not only deter impaired driving, but to proactively remove these dangerous drivers from our roadways," he added.
Have you ever been stopped at a sobriety checkpoint? Tell us in the comments.