{"id":36551,"date":"2022-12-30T21:45:45","date_gmt":"2022-12-31T04:45:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/law-enforcement-extra-vigilant-new-years-weekend\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T02:31:57","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:31:57","slug":"law-enforcement-extra-vigilant-new-years-weekend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/law-enforcement-extra-vigilant-new-years-weekend\/","title":{"rendered":"Law enforcement extra vigilant New Year\u2019s weekend"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"The
The Colorado Department of Transportation, Colorado State Patrol and local law enforcement agencies will conduct \u201cThe Heat Is On\u201d DUI enforcement from Friday to March 20 to keep Colorado roads safe from impaired drivers through St. Patrick\u2019s Day celebrations.<\/span>Courtesy of the Colorado State Patrol<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Driving conditions are not expected to be optimal this weekend with another bout of winter weather predicted for Southwest Colorado. But conditions will be downright dismal on Saturday and Sunday for drivers figuring to skate past police with a New Year\u2019s buzz.<\/p>\n

Despite the annual warnings that likely go back to the invention of the wheel, hundreds of Coloradans will attempt to drive \u201cbuzzed, stoned or wasted\u201d this weekend, according to the Colorado State Patrol.<\/p>\n

\u201cHistorically, December is a busy month for law enforcement due to poor decision-making at holiday parties, which leads to impaired drivers on Colorado\u2019s highways and community streets,\u201d said Mathew Packard, chief of the CSP. \u201cWhen you fail to call a ride-share or a sober friend, you endanger every motorist and pedestrian on your path home.\u201d<\/p>\n

In December 2021, state troopers issued 388 citations for driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs and investigated 44 impaired-driving crashes that resulted in injury or death.<\/p>\n

The Durango Police Department will not set up sobriety checkpoints because they are staff-intensive and do not have much success, said Cmdr. Casey Malone of the DPD.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are just going to increase some targeted enforcement and have some additional DUI cars out along with more staff,\u201d Malone said. \u201cWe generally have better success that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is always a spike in people cited for driving under the influence on New Year\u2019s Eve compared with other days of the year, he said. \u201cBut as always, we would like to remind the public to please drink responsibly, plan ahead, and if need be \u2013 have a designated driver.\u201d<\/p>\n

The legal \u201cper say\u201d limit of alcohol level in the blood that will result in a citation for driving impaired is .08 and above.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut that doesn\u2019t mean that less than .08 means you are not impaired,\u201d Malone said. \u201cTechnically, you could be stopped and be at .06, but if your driving has been poor and you perform poorly on field sobriety tests and the officer can articulate it, you can still be charged with (driving under the influence or driving impaired).\u201d<\/p>\n

For those who don\u2019t keep a blood-alcohol detector handy when imbibing, the science-based standard states that a 120-pound female reaches the legal limit (as in don\u2019t drive) after two drinks and a 180-pound man after four drinks. A \u201cdrink\u201d is considered to be either a single 1.5-ounce shot of hard liquor, a 12-ounce glass of beer or a 5-ounce glass of wine. However, research shows that some impairment begins for both sexes after a single drink.<\/p>\n

People who drive at the .08 level are 11 times more likely to have a single-vehicle crash than drivers with no alcohol in their system, according to police statistics.<\/p>\n

gjaros@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Durango police and Colorado state troopers will increase staff and patrols with an eye toward impaired drivers this weekend<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26867,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-36551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"Website Administrator","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36551"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36551\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83377,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36551\/revisions\/83377"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36551"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=36551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}