Washington State Patrol trooper Christopher Gadd’s badge number was 927 so his colleagues have picked Sept. 27 for emphasis patrols to honor Gadd’s work and memory

Paul Valencia
ClarkCountyToday.com

Washington State Patrol Trooper Christopher Gadd messaged his colleagues, telling them he was going to get one more stop before ending his shift. He would then meet them for coffee.

Gadd never made it to the coffee shop.

“When he was killed he was doing a DUI patrol,” said Sean Donaldson of the Vancouver Police Department. “He was stopped on the side of the highway, looking for erratic, reckless drivers and speeders, He was struck from behind by the impaired driver.”

That was in March near Marysville. The car was going 112 miles per hour when it hit Gadd’s vehicle.

This Friday, Gadd’s law enforcement family will be posted throughout the state, all doing DUI emphasis patrols as part of Target Zero.

These patrols are personal, dedicated to the memory of Trooper Gadd. Law enforcement officials are calling it the One More Stop patrol. 

In Southwest Washington, law enforcement officials from Vancouver, Battle Ground, Ridgefield, the Clark County Sheriff’s Office, and the Washington State Patrol will have representation on these patrols. The patrols start at noon on Friday, 9-27, to honor Trooper Gadd, whose badge number was 927. The patrols will continue until 5 a.m. Saturday morning.

Donaldson said Gadd had dedicated his career to stopping impaired driving. Donaldson, too, is an expert in recognizing DUI drivers.  

“Drunk driving is a choice. When we choose to drive impaired, it’s not an ‘if’ you will crash, it’s a ‘when’ you will crash,” Donaldson said. “It is my hope to catch folks who are impaired before the crash so we can prevent the crash from happening.”

Target Zero, the campaign to rid traffic fatalities from Washington’s roads and highways by 2030, has a difficult goal to achieve. But as Donaldson says, zero is the only acceptable number. None of us would be OK if only 1 out of our 100 friends was killed every year in traffic collisions. None of us would be OK if only 1 out of 500 friends was killed by a drunk driver. 

So the goal continues to be zero deaths. Zero.

Still, the numbers are the numbers. The statistics do not lie. Donaldson said it is very rare that a person who is arrested for DUI is driving impaired for the first time. They might have gotten away with it several times, without a crash or without being pulled over, but in most cases they have done it before. 

He and his colleagues say there is no justification for the act..

“With ride shares, companies like Uber and Lyft, taxicabs, public transportation like C-TRAN, there really is no excuse for driving impaired,” Donaldson said. “It costs a little bit of money for an Uber or Lyft. But if you kill yourself or somebody else, hurt somebody else or yourself, the cost is so much more than that.”

Washington’s law enforcement community lost one of its own earlier this year.

On Friday, the law enforcement community will honor Trooper Gadd with a special patrol.