Suffolk County SPIDRE Team wins state award for DWI crackdown

Suffolk County Deputy Damian Adams was named New York State’s top arresting officer as the Sheriff’s Office S.P.I.D.R.E. Team won statewide recognition for its impaired-driving crackdown on local roads.

The Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office S.P.I.D.R.E. Team, short for the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Proactive Impaired Driver Reduction Effort Team, received the Impaired Driving Enforcement Unit Recognition Award from the New York State Governor’s Traffic Safety Committee and Mothers Against Drunk Driving. The team operates out of the Sheriff’s Office Special Operations Bureau and patrols county roads looking for signs of impairment, including reckless lane changes, speeding and swerving, with the stated goal of stopping serious crashes and deaths before they happen.

The award follows a period of heavy enforcement. In the first three months of 2023, SPIDRE made nearly 50 DWI and DUI arrests, including seven aggravated DWI cases involving a blood-alcohol concentration of 0.18 or higher. Deputies also made 25 other arrests during DWI patrols, among them four stolen or unauthorized-use vehicle cases, one outstanding warrant arrest and four reckless-driving charges. Adams was previously honored on May 2, 2023 for making the most DWI and DUI arrests for the Sheriff’s Office in 2022.

Sheriff Errol D. Toulon, Jr. said the team’s stepped-up enforcement produced a 200% increase in DWI arrests compared with the first quarter of 2022, and that SPIDRE has made more than 1,000 drunk- or drugged-driving arrests since it began in 2015. For Suffolk residents, that means the award is tied to a simple question of public safety: whether more aggressive roadside enforcement is helping keep impaired drivers off the county’s streets before they can trigger a crash.

The recognition is part of an annual New York traffic-safety program that has been held since 1995 by highway safety partners including the Governor’s Traffic Safety Committee, STOP-DWI New York, the Division of Criminal Justice Services, the New York State Police and MADD. Suffolk County’s STOP-DWI program says both the Suffolk County Police Department and the Sheriff’s Office have officers dedicated to impaired-driving enforcement, and county officials continue to step up patrols during holiday and other high-risk periods.