A Mother, Police Chiefs Warn Drunk Drivers During Holiday Season

An Alexandria mother remembers a wonderful Christmas Day 2006 with her family. The next day she was beside a hospital bed where her youngest son "was struggling for his life."

Greg Berry, 18, a senior at T.C. Williams High School had gone for a ride with a friend who was driving drunk. The car smashed into a telephone pole. Both men extracted from the mangled car by the jaws of life.

He had a broken leg, cuts and a severe brain injury that claimed his life April 19, 2007. "Greg died in my arms," his mother Polly said Friday through tears. Behind her, a phalanx of area police chiefs who promised to hunt down and arrest drunk drivers this Christmas season.

Prince William Police Officer Jeremy Schenk lost two high school friends, a college friend and two U.S. Marine buddies to drunk drivers. So far in 2011 he has made 173 drunk driving arrests — that's about one every other day and probably the most in the area.

Schenk and Berry joined the Fairfax County police chief, the Montgomery County police chief, an assistant police said from the Metropolitan Police Department at a Tysons Corner restaurant Friday to send one message: If you drive drunk this holiday season, we'll get you.

The Christmas season is the deadliest time of year for accidents involving drunk drivers. A third of traffic fatalities are caused by drunk drivers. During the Christmas season that number increases to 40 percent, said Kurt Erickson, president of the Washington Regional Alcohol Program.

The chiefs said they increase efforts to "to detect and arrest drunk drivers" to save their lives — and yours. Here are five things the chiefs want you to know. 

1. Fairfax County Chief David Rohrer: "No matter where you are throughout the greater Washington region know this: if you drink and drive, you have no place to hide. You will be caught. You will be arrested and you will be prosecuted."

Fairfax will use police cadets to ask folks to buy liquor for them. Then arrest them for buying liquor for underage kids. Sobriety checkpoints. "We'll use every tactic we have in our arsenal," Rohrer said. "Drive sober or get pulled over."

2. Montgomery County Police Chief Thomas Manger said his officers are targeting drunk drivers and partnering with liquor stores and restaurants to identify and report customers who may be driving drunk.

3. Assistant Metropolitan Police Chief Patrick Burke called drunk driving "a public menace. ... Drunk driving is a crime plain and simple."

The consequences, he said: Jail. Loss of a job. "Living with yourself after you have killed someone."

4. Best defense against a drunk driver: Buckle your seat belt, he said.

5. If you can't drive home please call SoberRide and a taxicab will take you home for free. The program started Friday night and will operated from 10 pm-6 am each evening up to and including New Year's Eve.

"My wonderful amazing child should be here giving us hugs instead he's buried in Ivy Hill cemetery," said Polly Berry.