Sentence in Illinois DUI crash killing man's best friends

Closing out a sad tale involving a traffic accident that resulted in the death of his two best friends, Thomas G. Ofenloch pled guilty to committing Aggravated DUI in Illinois in a Kane county courtroom. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison by the Judge taking his plea. An expert witness in accident reconstruction testified that Ofenloch's vehicle had been traveling at speeds exceeding 100 mph at the time of the accident. Ofenloch, who was also injured in the traffic accident, had spoken over a dozen times to others either guilty of or accused of committing a DUI in Chicago and surrounding areas, and had served over 900 days on electronic home monitoring. The Court declined to credit this time to Ofenloch's sentence. His reported blood alcohol content was over the Illinois legal alcohol limit of 0.08.

Man gets 10 years in DUI crash that killed two best friends :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Metro & Tri-State

AAIM's misguided recognition

Points to anyone who sees what's wrong with this.

"Congratulations are in order for Cary Police officers Geoffrey Witherow, Ryan Sherman, Tricia Malone and Kathy Eiring, who made a combined 38 DUI arrests in 2009. In May, the Alliance Against Intoxicated Motorists recognized the four for their work. Witherow made the most DUI arrests out of the group with 25. Sherman and Malone had seven DUI arrests, with Eiring posting six arrests. Statistics show there were 70 total DUI arrests in Cary last year. Cary Acting Chief Ed Fetzer recommended that AAIM honor the four officers responsible for more than 50 percent of them. "Anytime an arrest has been made, we feel a life has been saved," said Anita Huvaere, the AAIM staffer who compiled the statistics for Illinois towns. "That's why we recognized the officers."" Daily Herald.

Every year, AAIM honors officers based on the number of arrests for DUI in Illinois.  All this does is promote arrests.  I'd be more interested in seeing how many of these arrests resulted in findings of guilty.  To suggest that lives were saved because someone was arrested is making some enormous assumptions that may (or may not) be warranted, given the extremely low rate of fatalities as measured against the wildly speculative numbers thrown around by organizations like AAIM of Illinois motorists committing DUI on an annual basis.  AAIM and MADD are constantly crying about how many DUIs are undetected.  If they're right, and if they're consistent, where's the bloodbath? 

Hmm. . . 12 "no-refusal" Illinois DUI arrests in a weekend. Countywide. Meh.

So Kane county holds an Illinois DUI "no-refusal" weekend. They set up with just bunches of officers on duty, and a Judge just waiting for the phone to ring so that Judge can say, "why, of course a warrant is available". The powers that be set this up over July 4th weekend, too, just for good measure. They ought to net a lot of arrests right? After all, the roads are just teeming with drunks that are begging to be arrested.

Maybe not. Eleven participating Illinois law enforcement agencies got a whole 12 DUI arrests out of this. That's right, 12. For the whole county. For the whole weekend.

Really? Here's the question - how many DUI arrests does Kane county, Illinois net on a regular weekend, and was this an effective use of government resource to enforce Illinois DUI laws on our roads. I doubt it, but I'd love to hear the Sun-Times and other news stories do more than just repeat the State's Attorney's PR hype on the subject, and ask some useful questions. Let's hope that until that question is answered, there's some more thought put into this.