The Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office and the Windham Police Department joined forces to conduct a driver’s license checkpoint on River Road, resulting in three summonses and 18 citations.
According to Windham Police Chief David DeGruchy, Michael Lavoie, 28, of 1019 River Road in Windham and Shaun Breton, 28, of 14 Mill Pond Drive in Windham, were both issued summonses for driving with suspended licenses. Maureen Frazier, 26, of 338 Mt. Hunger Shore Road in Windham was issued a summons for a registration suspended due to insurance. In addition, citations were issued to 18 other drivers for license, registration, insurance and inspection violations.
Capt. William Rhoads, of the sheriff’s office, said eight Windham officers and seven sheriff’s deputies ran 767 license checks during the three-hour period Tuesday morning. Set up in the Masonic Hall parking lot, the strike force moved vehicles through the process quickly and efficiently, aided by a new listing of the 4,382 suspended drivers from Cumberland County – with 662 on the list from Lakes Region towns.
“I’m pleased at the number of Windham Police Officers that are helping us this morning,” Sheriff Mark Dion said during Tuesday’s activities.
The Windham checkpoint was the sixth held by Dion’s Habitual Offender Strike Force program in recent months. These random driver’s license checks are designed to keep drivers with suspended licenses off the road.
Dion began the program prior to last summer’s accident in which commercial trucker Scott Hewitt, 32, drove his tractor-trailer into a car driven by 40-year-old Tina Turcotte of Scarborough. Turcotte was trapped inside for over an hour and died from her injuries a few days later.
At the time of the crash, Hewitt was driving with a suspended license. In fact, his record included 23 license suspensions, 63 driving convictions and involvement in a previous fatal accident. But, because of what many have called Maine’s weak laws, even with Hewitt’s extensive record, prosecutors were unable to charge him with vehicular manslaughter.
Since this accident, Sen. Bill Diamond (D-Windham) and Rep. Darlene Curley (R-Scarborough) have introduced a bill, “Tina’s Law,” that would severely penalize those driving with suspended licenses.
On Monday, at a public hearing in Augusta, many of the bill’s supporters turned out to testify on behalf of the legislation. “Tina’s Law” now heads for a work session with the Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee on February 15.
“We’re redesigning it,” Diamond said in a phone interview. “We’re taking out some things and looking at changes.”
Most likely, the committee will remove the mandatory vehicle impoundment because of two problems associated with its enforcement: the logistics of where to put all the vehicles and the cost of buying wheel boots and towing.
“We didn’t want the vehicle impoundment to distract from the purpose of the bill,” Diamond said.
They also plan to tighten and fine-tune the wording of the bill to specify more clearly the serious traffic offenses that would result in mandatory jail time.
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