Suffolk County steps up DWI patrols for Memorial Day weekend

Suffolk County put extra officers on the roads and waterways for Memorial Day weekend, targeting drunk, drugged and speeding drivers as part of a statewide crackdown that ran from Friday, May 23, 2025, at 6 p.m. through Monday, May 26, 2025, at 11 p.m.

County Executive Ed Romaine said the deployment focused on dangerous roads and on people who speed, drink and drive, or use drugs and then get behind the wheel. He said the same approach also applied on the water, where county law enforcement worked with the U.S. Coast Guard’s Long Island Sound sector to patrol boating routes.

The scale of the effort reflected a stubborn public-safety problem. Suffolk officials said police arrested about 330 people last summer for drinking or boating while intoxicated, and 29 people were arrested in the county during Memorial Day weekend alone the year before. Suffolk County is routinely among the highest in New York State for drunk-driving fatalities, a grim distinction that has kept impaired driving at the center of holiday enforcement on Long Island.

Police Commissioner Kevin Catalina said taking an Uber was far less costly than facing a DWI arrest in Suffolk County. The county said a conviction could bring thousands of dollars in fines, jail time, an ignition interlock device and a license loss of at least six months, consequences that can ripple through family schedules, work commutes and holiday travel across Suffolk’s road network.

The county’s STOP-DWI program said holiday details usually included extra officers, random checkpoints throughout Suffolk, and dedicated impaired-driving units from both the Suffolk County Police Department and the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office. The Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office also had lawyers assigned only to impaired-driving crimes, giving the county a full enforcement chain from the roadside stop to prosecution.

A previous overnight sobriety checkpoint in Patchogue showed how those stops worked in practice. Police and sheriff’s deputies screened 451 vehicles and arrested four motorists, a reminder that even one holiday checkpoint can find multiple drivers who made the wrong choice before heading home on local roads.