New Westminster Const. Jamie Crowston was named to Alexa’s Team, an honour bestowed on him four years in a row for his work bringing impaired drivers to justice.
Alexa’s Team is a provincial initiative that recognizes police officers for their work getting impaired drivers off the roads. It’s named in honour of Alexa Middelaer, a four-year-old girl who was killed by a drunk driver in 2008.
Crowston has been with the New West department for seven years – five of those have been with the department’s traffic unit. The Record caught up with Crowston to hear what it’s like.
1 – HOW DOES IT FEEL BEING RECOGNIZED FOUR YEARS IN A ROW?
It feels good to be recognized, but at the same time I’m just happy going out and doing what they let me do around here: go find impaired drivers and dangerous drivers and getting them off the road. That’s what I like doing.
2 – WHAT’S AN AVERAGE SHIFT LIKE WORKING TRAFFIC?
It all depends. Like right now, we’re assigned to the Pat bridge (Pattullo) for a whole bunch of hours a week, but most days it’s just going out and identifying areas that we believe might have issues or are high-risk, high-crash areas and going out and doing the enforcement to try and get people to drive safely.
3 – WHAT’S THE EASIEST WAY TO RECOGNIZE A DRUNK DRIVER?
Leaving the bar is always a good one, because most people don’t go to the bar and not drink. The typical one is, as they’re driving down the road is the weaving in the lanes, abrupt speed or lane changes, so they’re either speeding up really quick and then slowing back down or drifting across lanes, that sort of thing.
4 – WHAT ABOUT DRIVERS ON DRUGS, HOW DO YOU SPOT THEM?
A lot of the times you’re looking for the same things that you’re looking with alcohol-impaired driving. So you’re looking for that weaving in traffic, blowing lights, just that erratic driving that we normally look for, and then, when you pull them over and you’re not smelling any liquor on their breath or any alcohol or liquor in the vehicle or they blow a really low number, then you start thinking, ‘OK, well what else is going on here?’
5 – IF YOU WEREN’T A POLICE OFFICER, WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
Well, I started off as a mechanic and tow truck and truck driver, so I’d probably still be in that field, but I was lucky enough to get on with the police here, and I was able to bring that knowledge that I had, over here into the traffic unit. Especially as a truck driver, you see a lot of really poor driving behaviour, so I started to get to know the laws surrounding all that stuff while I was driving a truck, and I just transferred it over here and it just kind of took off for me.
