Starting Friday and continuing until Sept. 1, Oregon State Police will be stepping up patrols, looking for drunken drivers. With grants from the Oregon Department of Transportation grants, they plan to take drivers who are impaired by drugs or alcohol off the roads and highways.

The crackdown is part of a nationwide effort to pull over drunken drivers at a time when so many are on the road: The waning weeks of summer.

However, this summer, Corvallis police do not plan to participate in the DUII patrols. In fact, the agency did not obtain an ODOT grant.

“We didn’t apply for a grant (to target drunken driving) this year, so it will be business as usual for us,” Corvallis Police spokesperson Lt. Dave Henslee said.

DUII arrests by Corvallis officers are way down this year, Henslee said. Between Jan. 1 through July 2007, Corvallis police made 296 DUII arrests. During the same period this year, police made 93 DUII arrests. That’s a 68.3 percent drop, Henslee said.

He attributed the drastic decrease in DUII arrests to the resignation of former officer Dave Cox, who’d even been decorated in 2003 for his many DUII arrests in Corvallis.

However, after tests upheld the claims of Corvallis accountant Brian J. Noakes that he had no intoxicants in his system, Corvallis police launched an internal investigation of Cox’s arrests.

On Nov. 1, 2007, Cox resigned after six years with the department and moved to Boise, Idaho.

“I speculate that (Cox’s departure) is part of the reason for the drop in arrests,” Henslee said. “The other part is the heat the officers took … They may be less likely to seek out a DUII, thinking it might not be worth it.”

Noakes filed a pending lawsuit against the City of Corvallis and Cox on April 1, 2008, in U.S. District Court in Eugene. A similar lawsuit was filed June 13, 2008, by Carl Feher.

Cox maintains a Web site, Fact Finder Investigations, that offers help to motorists to fight false accusations of drunken driving.