During the past five years police departments in Centre County made 4,392 arrests for drunken driving, with an all-time high of 1,001 DUI arrests for 2006.
"Dangerous drinking has many different kinds of bad outcomes," said Bill Mahon, co-chair of the Partnership United Against Dangerous Drinking. "But one of the terrible outcomes are the innocent bystanders killed in drunken driving crashes."
"Too many of our friends and neighbors have been killed or badly injured in recent years," he said. "These eight police departments saved many, many lives by getting thousands of drunken drivers off the road. We owe these police officers thanks for these efforts, work that is often done late at night and on holidays.
"Enforcement is important, but it's not the entire answer to drunken driving," said State College Mayor Bill Welch, Partnership co-chair. "Education and legislative changes also can help reduce dangerous drinking. Most importantly, persons of all ages should embrace self-restraint if they're drinking alcohol, especially if they're going to get behind the wheel."
National experts on this issue estimate that for every drunken driving arrest made by police, many more drunken drivers are actually on the road and in danger of killing and hurting others.
In particular, the State College Borough Police Department is responsible for almost 2,000 of these arrests while the State Police made more than 1,100 DUI arrests during the five years covered by the report.
The Centre County DUI arrest data includes the work of police departments from Bellefonte, Ferguson Township, Patton Township, Penn State, Pennsylvania State Police at Phillipsburg and at Rockview, Spring Township and State College Borough.
Many other initiatives are under way by police and community and campus groups that are attempting to address a broad range of the problems associated with dangerous drinking.
Some of those efforts can be found on the Penn State Live news Web site at http://live.psu.edu/story/4536 online.