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Published on Thursday, January 2, 2003
in the Palatka Daily News
New Year's Eve had all the promise of police action -- fights, drunken drivers, speeders, accidents.
The final numbers on DUI citations, crashes and arrests for various degrees of violence may show a scenario full of police blotter items. But "early" on New Year's Eve -- 6 p.m. to 1:30 a.m. -- things were relatively quiet.
It must have been the rain, because there wasn't much going on that would cause police to get into high gear on New Year's Eve in Putnam County.
Florida Highway Patrol Trooper Andrew Litzell said the wet weather might exacerbate the driving difficulties, what with people imbibing. "The rain could be a big factor," Litzell said as a Daily News reporter started riding with him about 11:35 p.m.
From then until 1:30 a.m., the biggest problem was speeders. Litzell chased down three of them.
After the first ticket, which he gave to a woman on U.S. 17 in East Palatka, Litzell jokingly said: "One down, nine to go." Normally, on an overnight shift, he said he would give about seven tickets, 10 on a day shift.
He caught up with another speeder on County Road 315.
Before pulling anyone over, Litzell, like any trooper, said he looks for impaired driving, especially on New Year's Eve.
On the early-evening patrol, Trooper Larry McKenzie said he expected very little action during his shift.
After all, people hadn't hit the bars en masse yet.
McKenzie said he's worked many New Year's Eves in his career and has never seen a fatal wreck. But he has seen several accidents with serious injuries on the festive evenings.
"The real action happens from about 11 p.m. to 3 or 4 a.m.," McKenzie said, warning that riding early with the Florida Highway Patrol early in the night on New Year's Eve might be rather boring. But he said that once the clock strikes about midnight or 1 a.m.: "They gotta show off their car or some new gadget in it, or they've just got to start bar-hopping about 1 a.m. to see what they might have missed before last call, or if something's better some place else."
The rain that the meteorologists had promised came down about 7 p.m., spicing things up a tad. It came in buckets, and it caused several cars to wind up in ditches.
It rained so hard for a while that McKenzie leaned forward and could barely see 6 feet in front of the patrol car, as sheets of water whipped the windshield.
"Man, this rain is coming down," McKenzie said. "It should keep a lot of these people inside."
With the rain, came calls started coming over the scanner. That's when McKenzie came into action.
A would-be motorist tried to get his stalled car started on State Road 20. He said he didn't need help, but his speech pattern was slow and impaired.
"Did you smell his breath?" McKenzie said as he drove away. There was no distinct smell of alcohol, but the trooper assumed the man had been drinking. McKenzie let him go because the man had another person driving him home.
McKenzie waited and waited for a tow truck to fetch a young woman whose car had veered into deep mud along the shoulder of SR 20, then he did his duty directing traffic.
Just after that, driving along Silver Lake Drive, he encountered a car driven by a 17-year-old boy who ran his car into a ditch, knocking over two mailboxes in the process.
Actually, pretty routine stuff for any rainy night, McKenzie said. If someone seems genuinely sorry, he may not give him or her a ticket.
But he had to give a ticket for reckless driving to the teen-aged boy because he damaged property.
"Everybody I stop, I don't give a ticket to," McKenzie said. "Attitude is everything."