Chat With The Chief: New Year's Safety

With New Year's Eve just around the corner, many residents across the Oklahoma City metro will be out celebrating the new year.

In this week's Chat With the Chief, we sat down with Oklahoma City Police Chief Ron Bacy to learn some important safety reminders for your celebrations.

Q: What are some of the key issues that you want to remind folks to do just to be safe as we end the year?

Bacy: "Well, there's several things. You've had a wonderful Christmas. (A big mistake) people make is they take those big packages in those boxes and they put them on the curb, and they advertise all of the things that they have in their house. That's very attractive to burglars or people who would take advantage of that. So please be very careful with how you dispose of your holiday garbage so that it doesn't leave you as a potential victim.

Q: What do you want people to know about the event Downtown, or even the plans they're making?

Bacy: "The numbers of DUIs are far too high, and the fatalities associated with them are unacceptable by our community. So if you're going to have holiday plans or New Year's Eve plans and go out, please, be responsible. Use a ride share. Arrange a safe ride home, but do not drink and drive. We're making several efforts to ensure that we get intoxicated motorists off the road. We're going to do our part to save lives. We're going to ask our community to join us in that and not put us in that situation again. Please don't drink and drive. It's not only dangerous to you but to others.

Q: A lot where folks are saying, if you're going to put out a checkpoint, why do you tell them where the checkpoint will be? Any insight as to why you would announce where you would be?

Bacy: "A lot of the areas that we focus our enforcement on, is based on injury and fatality collision statistics, and so we're going to be in those places where we know that those incidents are most likely to occur. We want people to be hyper-vigilant in those areas and reduce those numbers."

Q: About the big events that happen in Downtown Oklahoma City, all too often, we see these mass events where things occur, especially when you have large groups of people, will there be extra enforcement for Oklahoma City's big event in downtown Oklahoma City?

Bacy: "Whenever there is a city-sponsored event, we're always going to have a presence there, and we will do our very best, along with anyone else we're working with to ensure that it's a safe event for all."