A Mother, Police Chiefs Warn Drunken Drivers This Holiday Season

Polly Berry remembers a wonderful Christmas Day 2006 with her family. The next day, she was beside a hospital bed where her youngest son "was struggling for his life."

Greg Berry, 18, a senior at T.C. Williams High School, had gone for a ride with a friend who was driving drunk. The car smashed into a telephone pole. Both men were extracted from the mangled car by the jaws of life.

He had a broken leg, cuts and a severe brain injury that claimed his life April 19, 2007.

"Greg died in my arms," Polly said Friday through tears, behind her, a phalanx of area police chiefs who promised to hunt down and arrest drunken drivers this holiday season.

Berry joined chiefs of police from Fairfax, Montgomery and Prince William County and a representative from the Metropolitan Police Department on Friday at a Tysons Corner restaurant to send one message: If you drive drunk this holiday season, we'll get you.

The holiday season is the deadliest time of year for accidents involving drunken drivers. A third of traffic fatalities are caused by drunken drivers, and during the Christmas season, that number increases to 40 percent, said Kurt Erickson, president of the Washington Regional Alcohol Program.

Prince William Police Officer Jeremy Schenk told the group he's lost two high school friends, a college friend and two U.S. Marine buddies to drunken drivers. So far in 2011, he has made 173 drunken driving arrests — that's about one every other day and probably the most in the area.

The chiefs said they increase efforts to "to detect and arrest drunk drivers" to save their lives — and yours.

Some tips the chiefs shared at Friday's meeting:

1. Fairfax County Chief David Rohrer: "No matter where you are throughout the greater Washington region know this: If you drink and drive, you have no place to hide. You will be caught. You will be arrested and you will be prosecuted."

He said Fairfax will target those who buy liquor for underage teens with police cadet stings in which the cadets ask people to buy alcohol for them. They'll also use sobriety checkpoints. "We'll use every tactic we have in our arsenal," Rohrer said. "Drive sober or get pulled over."

2. Montgomery County Police Chief Thomas Manger said his officers are targeting drunken drivers and partnering with liquor stores and restaurants to identify and report customers who may be driving drunk.

3. Assistant Metropolitan Police Chief Patrick Burke called drunken driving "a public menace. ... Drunk driving is a crime plain and simple."

The consequences, he said: Jail. Loss of a job. "Living with yourself after you have killed someone."

4. The best defense against a drunken driver is buckling your seat belt, Burke said.

5. If you can't drive home call SoberRide and a taxicab will take you home for free. The program started Friday night and will operated from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. every night up to and including New Year's Eve.

"My wonderful, amazing child should be here giving us hugs," Polly Berry said. "Instead, he's buried in Ivy Hill cemetery."