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City of Edina 4801 W. 50th St. Edina, MN 55424
Contact: Debbie Townsend, Communications Assistant
Phone 952-826-0396 dtownsend@EdinaMN.gov EdinaMN.gov
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Edina Police Officers Score DWI Hat Tricks
Edina, Minn., July 18, 2017 – The Minnesota Office of Traffic Safety (OTS) recently honored Edina Police
Officer Ben Wenande for his first “DWI hat trick” – arresting three people for driving while intoxicated
during a single shift.
It wasn’t a holiday or special day, just a typical Saturday night. From 6 p.m. June 3 to 6 a.m. June 4, Wenande
stopped drivers on Minnesota Highways 62 and 100 going through Edina. On his way back from dropping one
suspected drunk driver off at jail, he pulled over another.
“I think that night, I stopped a total of five cars and three of them were drunk drivers,” he said.
To get two DWIs in a shift is a lot, said Lt. Dan Conboy. For a patrol officer to have three is rare.
Bill Hammes, Law Enforcement Liaison for OTS, honored Wenande with a special baseball cap during shift roll
call on July 13. The cap, featuring a bat symbol, comes with a pin of two hockey sticks crisscrossed over a
beer bottle.
In an ironic twist, days after receiving his award, Wenande arrested three more DWI drivers in a single shift,
as did Officer Nicholas Donahue. They are awaiting official confirmation from OTS, which is a division of the
Minnesota Department of Public Safety.
They remain far behind Edina Officer Jacob Heckert, whose job is to focus on DWIs. He’s had eight hat tricks
in three years. OTS has honored him three times with hockey sticks, given for the second hat trick, and a
hockey jersey for his efforts.
“The work ethic in the Edina Police Department is absolutely amazing,” Hammes said. “I think they just
recognize the dangers of these people out on the streets.”
Heckert has seen how dangerous impaired drivers can be.
“Recently, I had a DWI crash on 50th Street right by the Police Department in a construction area and the
only thing stopping his vehicle was a construction cone stuck under the vehicle. The driver was passed out
with the vehicle still in drive and had to be woken up with a medical maneuver called a sternum rub,” Heckert
said. “I also had a driver overdose on heroin while driving once and had to be to be revived with Narcan after
crashing his vehicle.”
Though the legal limit is 0.08 in Minnesota, it’s not uncommon to find drivers with a breath alcohol
concentration three to four times that.
City of Edina 4801 W. 50th St. Edina, MN 55424
“We’re finding them, but we’d rather not be finding them,” Wenande said.
Edina Police Chief Dave Nelson says the DWI arrests are part of the City’s effort to
target the top complaint from residents – traffic safety. His phone rings regularly about
people speeding, blowing through stop signs and driving recklessly.
“If it wasn’t the No. 1 complaint from our residents, it wouldn’t be as high on our priority list,” he said.
A reputation for cracking down on DWIs and enforcing traffic rules helps to reduce overall crime in the city,
Nelson believes, especially when you’re right next door to a major city like Minneapolis.
“The higher visibility we have, the more crime is deterred,” he said.
For more information, contact Edina Police at 952-826-1610.
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