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Mission Moment – Jan 2021

A GOD-Story: From Death To Life
Patti Foster

Character can be formed, crafted, and shaped in so many different ways… Helen Keller, through her life-long adversity, learned: Character is not developed in quiet and ease. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success revealed. (Quote by Helen Keller)

Ah, the journey of life…. I invite you to step into my world and go back in time.

It was about 6:40 in the evening on that hot, summer’s night, June 18, 2002 – over 100 degrees! What I light-heartedly call “fry-daddy weather.” Four of us ladies were in a Tahoe, on our way to meet the others. Envision this with me, I was sitting behind the driver and all of us had our seatbelts on, being good law-abiding citizens.☺

Emily had completely stopped her Tahoe at the red light…all lanes of traffic were full. I had taken off my seatbelt to check on some flowers in a basket behind my seat. BAM! That’s when the impact happened!

A car-hauler truck pulling a trailer full of cars, barreling down the highway at 67mph slammed into the rear of our Tahoe with no warning. That’s when the life of this former radio personality came to an abrupt halt…much faster than “the blink of an eye.”

The right side of my face and head were ripped back and crushed; my right eye was hanging out of its fractured orifice onto the highway; fractures were all over me, from the top of my head to the tips of my toes; and multiple bodily injuries inside and out. My “heap of flesh and bones” was lying in a rapidly growing pool of my own blood. I had already lost well over 60% of my body’s blood.

An eyewitness described the scene, I saw something lying in the middle of the intersection. At first I thought it was a bag of leaves or some kind of bundle that had fallen off a truck. Then, to my shock, I realized that it was a real person …in the road! So I walked right out to this pitiful heap of flesh and bones, while the people on the side of the roads just kept staring at me and the body.

An EMS worker searched for my pulse. No pulse to be found. So she pulled the white sheet over my life-less body assuming I was dead. As onlookers and eyewitnesses filled the scene, some of them formed a circle over the heap of flesh beneath the white sheet and started praying. As EMS workers raced against time to save lives, one of the eyewitnesses heard a gurgling noise coming from beneath that white sheet.

An air-flight helicopter was contacted; it landed at the crash scene and flew me to the nearest trauma center of an acute hospital. My brain and body shut down and fell into a coma for 6 weeks.

I have had to re-learn every single, function of living…from the most elementary to the complex. In no time at all, that motor vehicle crash had stopped my dash of life and turned me into a 34-year-old infant.

Today some of my long-term deficits include:

  • Agitation
  • Fatigu
  • Short-term memory
  • Balance and equilibrium
  • Slower processing
  • Second-guessing my confidence
  • Slowed reflex

Through Jesus, I lean into my motto for living, M.A.D. Now! (Make A Difference Now!) and persevere through adversity.  #WeCanHelpEachOther #BetheHope 

Please visit: PattiFoster.com  and  HopeAfterBrainInjury.org  

And:

http://www1.cbn.com/content/patti-foster-my-only-constant

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Guest Author – Jan 2021

Sergeant Carlisle prepares the machine for a breath test.

In Tough Times, the Kansas City, Missouri Police Department DUI Unit is Exceeding Expectations

By: Bill Sullivan

NHTSA Law Enforcement Liaison, Region 7

During fiscal year 2019, the Kansas City Missouri Police Department DUI Unit made 536 DUI arrests. While this number was impressive, the 6 officers in the unit and their supervisor, Sergeant Corey Carlisle, thought they could do better. In October of 2019 they decided to have a unit goal of taking 1,000 impaired drivers off the streets of Kansas City. At this time, no one was aware that a few months later there would be a world-wide pandemic and a time of social unrest.

When the Covid pandemic began, the Kansas City Police Department, like most law enforcement agencies, made a decision to make little or no self-initiated contact with the public unless it was an emergency. For two months the DUI Unit made few self-initiated traffic stop contacts. After a few weeks of little or no self-initiated activity, the DUI Unit saw a large increase in impaired driving crashes. The decision was made to begin making self-initiated traffic stops again, with the goal of getting impaired drivers off the streets. The unit took additional safety precautions in how they did their job. They wore Personal Protection Equipment (PPE), and tried to keep social distancing when it was possible. According to Sergeant Carlisle, “no one would have said anything if we had just shut down completely, our guys are just not wired that way; I am so proud of them”.

Soon after the DUI Unit started conducting pro-active enforcement, Kansas City, like most urban areas, experienced a period of public protests and social unrest. Once again, the DUI Unit was unable to conduct impaired driving enforcement as they were re-assigned to help work these protests.

After several weeks of reassignment, the unit went back to their new “normal” operations. In spite of the many challenges the officers had faced, by the end of fiscal year 2020, the DUI unit had exceeded their goal and had made 1,046 impaired driving arrests! The officers of the Kansas City, Missouri Police Department DUI Unit are true heroes, dedicated to making the streets safer for the traveling public.

The Kansas City Missouri Police Department DUI Unit

Pictured Left to Right:

PO Nathan Magers, PO Jordan Infranca, PO Shawn Davis, Sgt Corey Carlisle, PO Jeremy White, PO Douglas Davidson, PO Ryan Kaighen.

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Officer of the Month – Jan 2021

MADD January 2021 Officer of the Month
Deputy Jason McLaughlin
Washington County Oregon Sheriff’s Office

Deputy Jason McLaughlin was hired by the Washington County Sheriff’s Office in 2004. He immediately took an interest in traffic safety, and more specifically, in DUII enforcement. Since his hiring, he has devoted nearly his entire career to the enforcement of impaired driving and serious injury and fatal crashes.

He has been a tireless champion of impaired driving enforcement in Oregon, as both a deputy. and an instructor. On August 21, 2020, Deputy McLaughlin arrested the 2,000th impaired driver of his career. As of January 4, 2021, his total has increased to 2,027 arrests. That is an average of 127 arrests per year! Deputy McLaughlin’s dedicated service and passion to remove impaired drivers from Oregon’s roadways has no doubt saved many lives.

Along with his DUII enforcement efforts and his mentorship as an instructor at Oregon’s Public Safety Academy, he is a crash reconstructionist with Washington County’s Crash Analysis Reconstruction Team.

Deputy McLaughlin has twice been named Oregon DUII Enforcement Officer of the Year, in 2008 and again in 2012. In December 2020, he received a Meritorious Service Award from the Oregon State Sheriff’s Association when he was recognized for his career achievements in impaired driving enforcement. To this day, Deputy McLaughlin remains a member of WCSO’s Traffic Safety Unit as a dedicated DUII-enforcement deputy.

MADD is proud to select Deputy Jason McLaughlin as the January 2021 Officer of the Month. We thank him for his dedicated service and wish him safety and the best throughout his remaining career. Thanks to Cate Duke, Program Specialist, from the MADD Oregon State Office for her nomination of Deputy McLaughlin.

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MADD extends our deepest condolences to the agencies and families who have lost officers and loved ones in the line of duty

For a complete listing of Officers lost in the line of duty, please visit: www.odmp.org

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