L-R: Deputy Brian Weck, Corporal Travis Vessels and Deputy Eric Blackard.
Congratulations to our San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department Colorado River Station, which received the Top Agency Award in the Small Category of 2020 Operation Dry Water.
“We really appreciate being recognized with the honor of receiving this award. Our philosophy is very simple. We achieve boating safety through enforcement,” said Corporal Travis Vessels. “Our guys are very proactive in their enforcement. We conduct boat stops, and this gives us an opportunity to do two things: one is, educate the public on what they’re doing wrong with boating. And the other thing is to spend some time with them and educate them, as well as check the operators, for any signs of being under the influence, to ensure that they’re boating sober and safe.”
Deputy Eric Blackard and Deputy Brian Weck were the department’s fully assigned boat deputies last year.
“They do a fantastic job,” added Vessels. “Out here in the Mojave Desert, we had 60 straight days of over 110 degree weather last summer. So it’s extremely excruciating. And I’m sure just like everybody, everywhere, our waterways were impacted greatly because of COVID. We had numbers we’d never seen before on the water. So we are out there doing our best part to make sure everybody was boating safely.”
Over the course of the three-day heightened awareness and enforcement weekend, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department deployed three officers who made 18 boating under the influence arrests. Additionally, these officers made contact with 160 recreational boaters and issued 40 boating citations.
Since the commencement of the Operation Dry Water awards program in 2017, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department has been named the ODW Small Category Top Agency for three of these years – 2017, 2019 and now again, in 2020.
Congratulations to our Colorado River Station for your award, and thank you for your continuing efforts to keep our residents safe!