Hundreds of law enforcement agencies took part in a nationwide crackdown on drinking and driving Saturday night into Sunday morning.
Coordinated by Mothers Against Drunk Driving, the goal of "Saturation Saturday" was to send a strong message to drivers ahead of the upcoming Labor Day holiday, which is statistically one of the worst weekends for DWI crashes.
The Irving Police Department was among local departments that participated.
Over the course of a few hours Saturday night and Sunday morning, Irving police made eight DWI arrests -- including a woman whose blood alcohol content was more than twice the legal limit and a man who drove the wrong way down the State Highway 114 service road with three young children in the back seat of his car.
Officers also made seven arrests for public intoxication, preventing those individuals from getting behind the wheel.
"It is very frustrating," said Officer Robert Reeves, a spokesperson for the Irving Police Department. "It's well advertised that drinking and driving is harmful to everybody involved. And so for anybody to do that -- they're just being very irresponsible."
Getting drunk drivers off the road is a priority for any law enforcement agency. But for the Irving PD, the fight is more personal than that.
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"Drunk driving has been a part of my narrative for my entire life," Chief Jeff Spivey said.
During a news conference to announce the Saturation Saturday initiative, Spivey revealed he never got the chance to meet his uncle, who was killed by a drunk driver the year before he was born.
And that wasn't the last time drinking and driving shattered his world -- or the department's.
On July 3, 1993, Officer Glenn Homs was struck and killed by a drunk driver while he responded to another call along Highway 114. It was the first time an Irving police officer died in the line of duty.
Spivey worked for the department at the time and said he was friends with Homs. Spivey called Homs "one of the finest officers I've ever known."
Just a few weeks later, he would receive more devastating news.
"I had only been asleep for a few hours -- and on the other end of that phone call was my mom," Spivey said. "Her words still echo in my head as it if occurred yesterday. She said Jeff, 'Danny is no longer with us.'"
Spivey's younger brother Danny went to a party that night, where he'd been drinking. As he drove himself home, he missed a curve in the road and his car went flying off the pavement and rolled.
He and a woman in the car were both killed.
"He was 23 years old," Spivey said. "And he had already been arrested twice for DWI."
He said no one should have to experience a phone call like the one he got -- because "drunk driving is 100% preventable."
"We need your friends, your family, your coworkers to apply that pressure on the persons that you know that drink and drive when they shouldn't -- or who are over the limit -- to prevent it," Reeves said.
The Cedar Hill, Mansfield, Duncanville, Grand Prairie and Euless Police Departments, as well as the Dallas County Sheriff's Office, also participated in the Saturation Saturday campaign.
