Police: May 2008 Archives

BY MIKE CETERA

Each year, without fail, the Schaumburg-based Alliance Against Intoxicated Motorists comes out with a list ranking DUI arrests in Northern Illinois communities. Each year, without fail, Aurora falls at or near the bottom of towns with 200 or more arrests.

In 2007, Aurora police made 223 DUI arrests, 39th among the towns surveyed. In 2006, the APD made 246 arrests, placing the department dead last in terms of the number of DUIs per sworn officer. Read more on how Aurora compared in prior years here.

In previous years, when these annual numbers have been released, the APD has maintained its officers are vigilant about drunken drivers. I'm guessing -- and this is only a guess -- the department has bigger fish to fry (read: gangs), which is why Aurora's neighbor to the east consistently makes hundreds more DUI arrests each year.

BY MIKE CETERA

So, Joe Birkett's son got caught in a pot bust. So what? Now we have confirmation his family isn't infallible either.

The arrest of Nicholas T. Birkett would have been relegated to the police blotter -- at best -- if he wasn't the son of the DuPage County state's attorney.

Instead, Joe's son becomes just another statistic in this country's "war on drugs." We are left to either empathize or mock a politician and his son.

BY MIKE CETERA

Here's something nobody is talking about: Shootings are down, way down, in Aurora this year.

Through Wednesday, shootings had dropped by more than 50 percent when compared to the same time period last year, according to Aurora Police Department statistics.

The numbers
25 shootings between Jan. 1 and April 30, 2008
53 shootings between Jan. 1 and April 30, 2007

Those figures put Aurora on pace to record 75 shootings this year. Wow.