31| The IFP -H alton H ills | T hursday,F ebruary 22,2018 theifp.ca SheridanNurseries GardeningMade Easy We're looking for friendly, enthusiastic individuals to join our Head Office, Nursery and Garden Centre teams. We can offer you a challenging and rewarding career with: • Full support training program • Room for advancement • Competitive wages • Comprehensive health plan Apply on-line at sheridannurseries.com Impaired driving remains one of the three big road safety issues in Halton Region. Statistics show that impaired drivers are much more likely to cause collisions, highway inju- ries and vehicular deaths than nonimpaired drivers. There real- ly isn't any greater risk to public safety than this. Impaired driving is the num- ber one criminal cause of death in Canada. We still see drivers choosing to operate a vehicle while impaired by alcohol or drugs. The current environment of policing demands that we be more strategic with the resourc- es we have, in order to further re- duce the incidence of impaired driving. The bottom line: our service's enforcement initiatives need to be as targeted as possible. The pathways to an impaired arrest are well defined: an im- paired driver is identified as a re- sult of RIDE (Reduce Impaired Driving Everywhere) activities; a citizen calls to report a suspected impaired driver; or officers at- tend a vehicle collision involving an impaired driver. Historically, RIDE activities were scheduled to dovetail with the "typical" profile of an im- paired offence - Friday and Satur- day nights, in proximity to the lo- cal pub. Police services also de- pended, at least in part, on the vigilance of members of the pub- lic calling 911 if they witnessed suspected impaired driving. Across the nation, year after year, services have applied the same formula to an escalating problem, with the same result. Recognizing that traditional approaches to impaired enforce- ment represented an opportunity for improvement. The Halton Regional Police Service leveraged its existing database of impaired-related in- formation and used business in- telligence and advanced analyt- ics to refine its deployment mod- el, develop innovative tactics and inform our enforcement activi- ties. In 2014, the HRPS embarked on an ambitious and innovative multi-year initiative to examine the upstream activity for all im- paired arrests in Halton. Our goal was to data mine the metrics to identify opportunities for pre- vention and early intervention, so we could sharpen the focus of our enforcement activities. Prevention and early inter- vention are hallmarks of the joint HRPS and Region of Halton Com- munity Safety and Well-Being Plan, launched in November 2017. We know from experience that there are factors that cannot be controlled or influenced, but our service has the desire to use ex- isting information on past im- paired driving offences to en- hance our front line response. More on these strategies next week. Nishan Duraiappah is a Depu- ty Chief with the Halton Regional Police Service. This is the first of a three-part column on the HRPS's enhanced enforcement model tar- geting impaired driving in Hal- ton. OPINION Police use data to drive impaired enforcement activities NISHAN DURAIAPPAH Traditional approaches to enforcement represent an opportunity for improvement, says Duraiappah The Grade 5/6 class at the Hal- ton Hills Christian School in Georgetown has been working very hard to plan a benefit concert in an effort to raise money to help bring an Eritrean refugee to Cana- da. The Beyond Ourselves initia- tive is part of the school's project- based learning, which requires each class in the school to take on a large project and answer the ques- tion of how they, as difference mak- ers, can help someone in need. The Christian Reformed Church in Georgetown spearhead- ed the fundraising initiative after the plight of an Eritrean refugee was brought to the attention of one of their members, Linda De Boer, who is also the secretary at HHCS. The benefit concert, which is set to take place at the Georgetown Christian Reformed Church on March 7 starting at 7 p.m., will oper- ate on a "donate what you can" ba- sis. Christian School hosting benefit concert for Eritrean refugee DANIELLE MARR dmarr@caledonenterprise.com