Pittsburgh secures funding to boost DUI enforcement, which is about half what it was 5 years ago

Pittsburgh police are making about half the DUI arrests they did just five years ago, but a state grant could help the bureau ramp up enforcement, officials said Wednesday.

A $174,000 grant from PennDOT’s Highway Safety Division will help pay for overtime for officers to work DUI checkpoints and patrols, said Sgt. Terry Donnelly, who heads the bureau’s DUI task force. Money also will go toward related training, checkpoint equipment and other supplies, he said.

“This grant is vital for us being able to keep that presence out in the community,” Donnelly said.

He said the bureau has seen DUIs drop “dramatically.” About five years ago, Pittsburgh police processed between 1,200 and 1,300 DUI arrests annually, according to Donnelly. More recently, he said, that number has dropped to 600 to 800.

Ride-share service offered by companies such as Uber and Lyft have played a role in reducing DUIs by providing a convenient way for people to get home without getting behind a wheel while impaired, Donnelly said. Ride-shares have “really helped decrease the number of impaired drivers on the roadways,” he said.

But another factor, according to Donnelly, is that there aren’t as many police officers monitoring for DUIs. Checkpoints aren’t as frequent, and roving patrols watching for DUIs are also down because the bureau is short-staffed.

Officials said early this month that Pittsburgh had 852 police officers, though the city budgeted for 900 and the bureau has usually operated above that number.

“We just simply don’t have the time and the resources now as we have in the past,” Donnelly said.

Officers are already commonly working mandatory overtime to compensate for lower staffing levels. That means it’s harder to find officers who also have time to volunteer for extra DUI enforcement overtime.

City officials recently announced new police training classes will be preparing additional officers in the coming months in an effort to bolster the force’s numbers.

There’s enough grant funding, Donnelly said, to increase the number of police working DUI enforcement overtime and manning extra DUI checkpoints if they had the staffing to do so.

The city has received funding through the grant program for more than 15 years, according to Councilman Bruce Kraus. The money is “very adequate” for the task force’s needs, Donnelly said, explaining the bureau has struggled to use all of the grant money in recent years.

Despite the dropping number of DUI arrests in Pittsburgh, Kraus said there’s still much work to be done to further reduce the number of impaired drivers on city streets.

“There are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of impaired drivers on the streets of Pittsburgh any given weekend,” Kraus said. “They’re driving through your neighborhood.”

PennDOT is finalizing a $17 million project on East Carson Street that aims to make the road safer from Station Square through 30th Street in the South Side, Kraus said. The project was conducted in response to PennDOT data that found East Carson Street was the “sixth-most dangerous stretch (of road) in the state of Pennsylvania based on DUI numbers,” Kraus said.