By Peter Polack

Peter Polack

A senior police officer in the Cayman Islands has suggested in a recent media article that lowering the alcohol drunk driving limit would lower road deaths.

Curious.

A few months prior, his colleague , also a senior officer, was interviewed by the same media outlet and he stated that based on the data, drunk driving in the Cayman Islands was unaffected by a change of the limit from .1 to .07. Regrettably, this contradictory declaration was not put to the latest police expert and his anecdotal pronunciation.

Their Commissioner must be asleep at the wheel.

What is clear is that the police and legislative branches of government are fixated on detection and punishment of drunk driving offences not prevention. The latest police offering talked about many prevention tools but not about their having power to limit recidivism.

In doing this there is an avoidance of optional elements:

The granting of bail to persons with prior convictions or already on bail for the same offence.
The failure to copy existing provisions that allow seizure of vehicles in other cases such as use of radar detection devices.
Allowing persons to continue driving after arrest generally or failure to restrict or deny driving as a condition of bail.
Restricting persons ability to drive outside of work hours after completion of their period of absolute disqualification.
Seizure and sale of vehicles upon a second dui conviction.

This is the weakness of Caribbean police and legal system not the legislators.

This is a failure of police and portfolio leadership in the Caribbean.

It may be tempting to get some facts if it is not an unreasonable diversion of resources that could assist decision making as opposed to shooting from the hip:

Number of government employees with a dui conviction.
Number of government employees with a dui conviction using government vehicles or machinery.
Number of persons given bail with prior conviction.
Number of persons with dui conviction.

It would be a start.

The overriding problem in the Caribbean is an excess of directives, policy or law based on anecdotes or whims but not empirical evidence, expert input or peer review. Case in point would be the knee jerk removal of preliminary inquiries in criminal cases by intellectually limited law and legal leaders which has led to a tsunami of cases in overburdened legal systems.

Passing the buck but keeping the salary.

Notes
https://www.caymancompass.com/2025/09/23/police-superintendent-says-lower-drink-driving-limit-could-cut-road-deaths/
https://www.caymancompass.com/2025/05/21/drink-drive-limit-change-hasnt-reduced-duis-or-crashes/

Peter Polack is a former criminal lawyer in the Cayman Islands for several decade. His books are The Last Hot Battle of the Cold War: South Africa vs. Cuba in the Angolan Civil War (2013), Jamaica, The Land of Film (2017) and Guerrilla Warfare: Kings of Revolution (2019). He was a contributor to Encyclopedia of Warfare (2013). His latest book is a compendium of Russian espionage activities with almost five hundred Soviet spies expelled from nearly 100 countries worldwide 1940-88. 

His views are his own.