Flashing lights illuminate rain drops into blue streaks over an SVSU campus police cruiser. Night Officer Chad Lackowski was in the driver’s seat. A 19-year-old sat in the back, facing a minor in possession charge.
“I’m so disappointed in myself,” the minor said, “my whole family is going to be disappointed…This is not the kid I am. Yeah, I’m a college kid and I drank some beer. Yeah I’m underage. I know that. But I mean, I never try and cross the line and tonight I really messed up.”
“How much have you had to drink?” Lackowski asked. “Be honest with me.”
“Two, three beers and a shot of Burnett’s, sir. Cherry Burnett’s.”
The Nov. 6 Pierce Road stop resulted in two minor in possession of alcohol (MIP) tickets, one of the more common weekend write-ups for the campus police. But Lackowski, a 2005 SVSU graduate, says there isn’t a typical day in police work, which is one of the aspects that drew him to the job.
Chief of Police Ronald Trepkowski said the officers take an interest in the students.
“The biggest thing,” Lackowski said after writing the two MIPs, “[is] I don’t want them doing it again, and I want them to realize that what they’ve done is wrong…They have to have some type of consequence for their actions.”
The minor’s car had rolled through a stop sign around midnight. Lackow-ski flipped on his lights, but instead of pulling over to the side of the road, the car pulled into the entrance of Campus Village.
Lackowski ran the plate numbers in the Mobile Data Terminal (MDT), a computer resting about armrest level, before approaching the vehicle. He talked with the driver and returned to his cruiser, a Chevy Impala. The driver did not have his license with him. Lackowski punched his information in the computer and found the driver’s record was clean.
Lackowski returned to the driver, asking him to get out of the car. The officer’s pen-sized light illuminated the driver’s face as the driver’s eyes followed the light back and forth.
Lackowski took a device out of the police car and gave the driver what would be the first of three breathalyzers.
“He did all of my sobriety tests really well,” Lackowski explained later. Lackowski said if he hadn’t smelled the alcohol on the driver, he wouldn’t have had much reason to believe he was intoxicated.
Lackowski escorted the driver to the back of the police car and took his information.
The driver said he had only driven about a mile and thought he was able to get himself home. The driver blew a .080 blood alcohol content. His passenger blew over twice as
high.
“Well, here’s what I’m going to do for you,” Lackowski explained. “You’re going to get an MIP today.”
From the backseat there came, “Is there anything I can do? Anything?”
“You can take this to court …” the officer began.
“Seriously, it could have been 100 percent a lot worse,” replied the voice.
“Well, I understand 100 percent that it could have been a lot worse,” Lackowski said. “You could have rolled through that stop sign and hit someone. You could have hit someone while you were driving impaired, OK?”
“Yeah … I kicked back and drank a few beers and I know I shouldn’t have drove, but there is no one else who could have done a better job.”
“You couldn’t have stayed there?” the officer questioned.
Well, I mean I could have, but…”
“Listen to the situation I’m in OK?
You drive down the road, get in an accident, kill someone, and I let you go.”
“Well, yeah. But that would never happen though.”
A second campus officer, Luke Huss, assisted Lackowski and parked the minor’s car, taking the keys until morning. Huss, after receiving permission, searched the car and found two full beer cans under the passenger seat.
The stop was Lackowski’s third since about 10 p.m. These situations included giving warnings for failure to stop at a stop sign and for illegal window tint.
When not on call, Lackowski patrols within the campus, making traffic stops or conducting property checks.
“I usually look for someone to blow the stop sign. Bad,” he said. “For me, other factors are [their] driving record. Are they nice? Are they not real happy? For me and a lot of officers, attitude will get you a long way.”
Trepkowski said the University officers write about one ticket for every four stops. MIPs are common calls during the night shifts, he said, and the biggest challenge on campus is theft.
SVSU has had a police department since about 1977 according to Trepkowski. The chief’s work with the campus police since 1979 and connection with the University had him describing himself as someone who “bleeds Cardinal red.”
“[Students are] liable to see our officers all about the campus simply because we take an active interest in the campus,” Trepkowski said, “… and that makes the connection, too. I’m not just a police officer out here [wanting] to enforce the law and that’s it. I think we want to make a connection to the community and make sure we know that we are a part of our community."
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