Dan Roser has been in his new role less than a month _ but has already been given plenty of reasons to stay.
The 33-year-old is the new Traffic Alcohol Group sergeant, and in a recent operation saw a pregnant woman with a breath alcohol reading of more than 1000 micrograms
per litre of breath. The legal limit is 400mcg.
Her partner had been caught drink-driving the previous night.
"There's a certain group of people that are arrogant enough to say `I don't care'," Mr Roser said.
"If they're arrogant enough to not care about drink-driving, then the penalties they get are irrelevant to them."
Mr Roser said this was one group of people to whom he wanted to get through, as they contributed to a significant drink-driving problem in the Western Bay.
"There's huge numbers of drink-drivers out there, and they cause a lot of problems that are very far-reaching," he said.
"On the last week that I worked, we got 34 drink drivers ... we were catching one in about every 15 minutes."
Mr Roser has spent all of his policing career in the Western Bay, spending five years in Tauranga South as a general duties officer before moving to central Tauranga for three years in the same role.
He took up the post with the Traffic Alcohol Group three weeks ago.
"It's a very proactive type of policing," he said.
"It's absolutely tragic when innocent people are injured or killed on our roads."
Mr Roser will run Traffic Alcohol Group operations across the Western Bay and is one of seven staff on the team.
He plans on catching as many people as possible and making the roads as safe as possible.
"The ultimate goal is to educate people enough so that they make those [right] decisions," he said.
