DANVILLE -- For dozens of weekend travelers, an interstate exit ramp just southwest of this tiny Twiggs County town ended up being the wrong spot to get off the highway. They wound up in handcuffs on self-imposed detours to jail.
Drivers and passengers occasionally out-smarted themselves after seeing flashing signs along Interstate 16 that declared: “License Check Ahead.”
Some, thinking they’d slip around the checkpoint, wheeled off the freeway at a no-gas-station, no-store exit 27 miles east of Macon. And there, just past the checkpoint signs at Exit 27, the checkpoint police were waiting Friday and Saturday.
As of Saturday afternoon, more than 55 drivers and passengers -- most of them from out of state or other parts of Georgia -- had been carted to jail, suspected of everything from driving without licenses to DUI to drug possession.
Twiggs sheriff’s deputies had seized a total of about 4 pounds of marijuana from a handful of cars passing through the Ga. 358 interchange, a few miles southeast of the Ga. 96 exit between Macon and Dublin.
Some of the travelers, informed they’d been fooled, just grinned. Others didn’t seem to grasp that they’d made the wrongest of wrong turns, that had they motored on along the interstate they would have never been caught. There was no checkpoint on the freeway, just an orange-barreled work zone where traffic merged to one lane, the perfect camouflage for a traffic sting.
Drug-sniffing dogs joined 25 or so officers from various midstate law enforcement agencies, backed by the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety, to greet the unsuspecting motorists at the curved off-ramp where the police weren’t visible to oncoming cars until it was too late to turn back. Those who tried -- some even stopped on the ramp -- were reeled in by chase cars.
Fifty or so of the arrests were made between midday and midnight Friday as weekend traffic cruised toward Savannah. Saturday afternoon, business wasn’t as brisk at the checkpoint, but officers expected traffic to pick up during the evening.
“We’ll get some more coming in,” Twiggs sheriff’s Maj. Jamie McDaniel said.
The idea behind the ruse, he said, is to get lawbreakers off the roads.
“Our main goal is to save lives and reduce injuries and accidents,” McDaniel said. “This is a tool we use to create a safer environment on our highways during this travel weekend.”
He said in recent years, complaints of drunken or erratic drivers around the St. Patrick’s Day holiday prompted Twiggs authorities to ramp up interstate enforcement.
To contact writer Joe Kovac Jr., call 744-4397.
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