Because DUIs Are The Real Terrorists, Or From The Global War On Terrorism To The Global War On Drunk Driving

Stopping suspicious cars and trucks at the city’s river crossings has become a massive 24-hour-a-day sobriety checkpoint, resulting in so many arrests that the police are creating “arrest-processing centers” at bridges and tunnels:

The number of arrests at the city’s bridges and tunnels has skyrocketed 700 percent since 9/11, when cops stepped up their campaign of stopping suspicious cars and trucks in an effort to thwart another terrorist attack, officials said.

The unprecedented jump in collars at nine key spans in the Big Apple, including the Queens-Midtown Tunnel and the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, has prompted MTA Bridge and Tunnels to build two “arrest-processing centers” — equipped with high-tech computers capable of scanning fingerprints and running criminal background checks.

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Greg Lombardi, vice president of the Bridge and Tunnel Benevolent Association, said it will also help them “effectively track arrests, crime patterns and criminals.” Statistics show that in 2000, 202 arrests — including 165 for drunken driving — were made at the nine crossings with another 278 arrests made in 2001.

Since then, arrest figures have jumped dramatically, starting in 2002 when 434 motorists were arrested and rising to a high in 2005 of 1,803 collars — 784 of them for driving while intoxicated.

“Since 9/11, mobile and foot patrols on the plazas and facilities have increased and we execute a greater number of random checkpoints and stops,” Lombardi said.

In addition to catching drunken drivers, the second greatest number of arrests involves charges of driving without a license or with suspended licenses, according to Martha Walther, acting president of MTA Bridges and Tunnels.