While the week of spring break saw a lull in police activity in Oxford, Green Beer Day March 8 saw a total of 34 arrests - doubling last year's 17.
Sgt. Jim Squance of the Oxford Police Department (OPD) believed that the sunny weather during that Thursday resulted in the increase in arrests.
"People partied all day and into the night," Squance said. "There was no reason (Miami University) students might have stopped partying and gone inside this year."
A large factor of student's all-day drinking was the change from wintry to warm spring weather, according to Squance. Students were also not impeded by rain, as they were during last year's Green Beer Day. The time proximity of spring break may have also caused further student drinking.
Despite the heightened activity of Green Beer Day, local police departments got a break after the celebration's surge of arrests. The week of spring break resulted in only 15 reports, which is a quiet week according to Squance.
Students were involved in just two of the incidences during spring break, including a burglary at 902 Arrowhead Dr. and a stolen car stereo and CDs on Foxfire Drive.
On Green Beer Day, OPD recorded five DUI arrests, nine underage intoxication citations, three open container citations, five public intoxication citations, four littering tickets and eight other miscellaneous tickets.
The Butler County DUI Taskforce did not arrest any drunk drivers in any of their three DUI checkpoints the night before Green Beer Day, though OPD did arrest five drivers during the day.
College students from Miami were responsible for three of the five DUI citations.
One of the DUI incidences included Miami first-year Mathew Glaab in a potential vehicular fire. According to the report, an Oxford resident reported a car on Contreras Street highly revving its engine while in park.
According to police, when OPD arrived at the scene, they found Glaab passed out in the driver's seat of a car that had smoke coming from under the hood. The report said police also heard the car's engine over their sirens, and the RPM of the car was at its maximum on the dashboard.
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Police were unable to wake Glaab and the doors were locked, so the officers were forced to break in through the back passenger seat with their batons. Once inside the vehicle, police found Glaab's foot was pressing all the way down on the accelerator.
When police woke Glaab, he reportedly became combative with the officers. Police reports state that Glaab allegedly held tight to both the center console and the doorframe and it took two police officers to remove him from the smoke-filled car.
When Glaab refused to sit on the curb away from the car for his own safety, police handcuffed him and put him in the back of their cruiser. At OPD, it was discovered that Glaab had a blood alcohol content that was almost twice the legal limit of .08 percent alcohol of the overall blood content.
Squance stressed the potential for a much more disastrous outcome to the situation.
"There were a lot of bad scenarios that could have happened here," Squance said. "When you drink to the point where you don't know what's going on around you, you need to set your priorities straight."
Squance emphasized the importance of safe driving and making responsible decisions in the context of alcohol.
"The main thing is always student safety, whether it be a designated driver or a ride from Oxford or Miami Police," Squance said.
According to Squance, the police agencies in Oxford were particularly wary of any signs of driving under the influence because of a past incident on Green Beer Day when a train struck a Miami student's vehicle on Chestnut Street. David Brown had a blood alcohol level of almost twice the legal limit when he drove onto the tracks and was struck by a freight train at around 5 a.m. on Green Beer Day in 2005.
Sgt. Dana Hutton, head of the DUI Task Force in Butler County, said that the checkpoints were enacted not specifically for arrests of persons driving under the influence, but for an overall awareness of the presence of police for drinkers who would think twice about driving.
"We set up these checkpoints to make drivers aware of the danger and also accountability drinking and driving can create," Hutton said. "We will probably do the same next year."
According to Hutton, there were six fatalities on the Butler County highways last year in March.
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