The made seven arrests for operating while intoxicated as a result of an OWI Task Force effort over St. Patrick's Day weekend.
One of those – the driver's sixth offense – appeared to have nothing to do with holiday revelry, but rather with serious abuse of prescription drugs.
Police started focusing on possible drunken drivers at 7 a.m. Saturday and continued through early Sunday morning, with a main force of 10 officers dedicated to the task force from 3:30 p.m. Saturday until midnight. Officers made 66 traffic stops all together and issued 35 citations for all offenses.
Six arrests were made for operating under the influence of alcohol, with an average blood alcohol content among those drivers of 0.16.
Details were not yet available for all the arrests, but a typical one occurred at 11:46 p.m. Saturday.
A 54-year-old Wauwatosa woman was arrested for her first offense after she was stopped in the 6600 block of West Wisconsin Avenue by an officer who saw her making multiple deviations from the lane of travel.
She failed a field sobriety test and blew a 0.14 blood alcohol content on a breath test.
Legal prescriptions, but at what dosage?
Alcohol may or may not have played a part in one arrest, but officers felt sure that severe drug abuse did.
At 5:17 p.m. Saturday, 29-year-old Kelli Lynn Mundt of Milwaukee was arrested and has since been charged for her sixth time for operating a vehicle while intoxicated after she was reported passed out in her running car in the 7200 block of West Center Street.
Police arrived to find Mundt's car parked at a 45-degree angle to the curb and Fire Department paramedics already attending to her.
The Wauwatosa resident who had called 911 told officers he had seen her slumped over the steering wheel and could not wake her when he pounded on her window.
Police interviewed Mundt in the back of the medical unit, and though she was still slow to respond, she said she had not been drinking and was only very tired. She also said she had prescriptions for Oxycodone and Alprazolam for chronic pain.
Mundt gave consent to search her purse, where officers found two empty prescription bottles in her name for Oxycodone, one for 150 pills that had been filled on Feb. 24. An Alprazolam bottle contained 30 pills but had been filled for 150 pills on Wednesday.
Mundt claimed she had taken only one of each that morning but could not or would not account for the fact that so many pills had disappeared in so short a time.
Based on her condition, police asked her to perform a field sobriety test, which she attempted but could barely complete. Based on the evidence, the officer determined that the woman had been driving while abusing prescription drugs and made the arrest, then took her for a blood draw.
A records check showed she had three OWI convictions in 2003 and one each in 2008 and 2009. The report did not say whether those were for alcohol or drugs.
