The Durango Police Department made 14% more arrests for drunken driving in 2022 than it did in 2021, but it is unclear if officers are becoming more efficient at catching drunken drivers or if more people are driving drunk.
DPD made 240 DUI arrests in 2021 and 274 arrests in 2022, said Sgt. Devin Conroy. Twenty DUI arrests were made Dec. 2 through Dec. 18, a rate of more than one arrest per day.
Conroy said the police department also recorded 27 DUI-D’s (driving under the influence of drugs) and seven DWAI’s (driving while ability impaired), which involve a blood-alcohol level of less than 0.08%.
“Around the holiday season we tend to see an uptick just because you have holiday parties,” he said. “People who think they are OK to drive but might be just slightly over the legal limit. Or people who are just having a good time and as a result they end up getting a little too lax at the wheel and then that results in, obviously, them getting stopped and resulting in a DUI.”
While the holidays usually lead to more drunken drivers and subsequent arrests, the fact that arrests increased last year over 2021 can be read a couple of ways, Conroy said. The increase may be an indicator that new police officers are gaining more experience in identifying drunken drivers and are therefore making more arrests. It could also mean there are simply more drunken drivers on the road.
“It’s kind of a bummer to see our numbers were down for a couple of years and now they’re back up,” Conroy said. “They’re slowly rising. Maybe our officers are more productive or maybe people aren’t taking this as seriously.”
Conroy said there are two approaches to making DUI stops: The shotgun spread and the sharpshooter strategy.
“You can stop every car in the world and eventually you’re going to run into DUI’s,” he said. “Or, you can be like a sharpshooter and you can really look for those types of signs. And only make two or three traffic stops a night and end up with one, maybe two DUI’s.”
The sharpshooter approach is what DPD officers are pursuing more often nowadays, he said. Instead of a catchall approach to finding drunken drivers – think DUI checkpoints – officers are making stops based on specific driver behaviors.
Officers Sam Kullberg and Hunter Lusk made 38 and 51 DUI arrests in 2022, respectively. Based on the officers’ combined 89 arrests, the average person stopped had a breath-alcohol score of 0.167%, or more than twice the legal driving limit of 0.08%.
“Which just shows you that people aren’t getting popped for having two beers and then driving home,” Conroy said.
A driver just at the legal limit may feel lightheaded, a little giddy or some other alcohol-induced effect that might make one think twice about jumping behind the wheel, he said. When someone reaches twice the legal blood-alcohol limit, his or her ability to react quickly to situations worsens and the intake of information slows, increasing the risk of a crash.
“Sometimes people forget that (drinking and driving) is still very serious in the United States,” he said. “You have programs like Mothers Against Drunk Driving and Colorado Department of Transportation who hand out specialized grants for law enforcement to enforce this more.”
La Plata County Sheriff’s Office made 132 DUI arrests in 2022 in addition to 10 DUI-D arrests and 66 arrests for driving under revocation, a misdemeanor offense that carries possible penalties of 30 days to 18 months in jail and/or $3,000 to $5,000 in fines, said spokesman Chris Burke.
“If someone is stopped and contacted and it’s later found out they are driving under revocation, that is grounds for immediate arrest,” he said.
Burke said the Sheriff’s Office is on par with the per capita number of DUI arrests made by larger agencies such as Denver Police Department and Boulder Sheriff’s Office, and said the Sheriff’s Office’s DUI enforcement efforts are helped by several funding grants that provide about $60,000 annually for enforcement efforts.
LPCSO and DPD typically receive a High Visibility Enforcement grant and a Law Enforcement Assistance Fund grant. The Sheriff’s Office also applies for a Click It or Ticket grant, while DPD occasionally receives grants from Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
Burke said the Sheriff’s Office doesn’t have anything against drinking, but people can’t drink and drive.
cburney@durangoherald.com
