Several factors at work as Tucson DUIs decline05:55
PM MST on Monday, December 12, 2005 In Tucson and nationwide, fewer people are getting arrested for drunken driving. With three weeks left in the year, arrests for drunken driving in Tucson could be down 15 percent to 20 percent compared with last year. Tucson Police Department officers have arrested 2,745 for DUI this year, compared with more than 3,500 arrests in each of the past two years. Nationwide, five- and 10-year trends show DUI arrests are down about 4 percent, according to FBI data. There are several reasons for the decrease locally, including publicity and staffing levels, said Sgt. Dave Leotaud, who leads the department's DUI squad. "We would like to think the public is getting educated enough that they're not driving drunk," he said. More education programs are in place, including some aimed at reducing youth alcohol abuse. Officers help with outreach by taking high-tech toys, like drunken driving simulators, to high schools. Police hope the message is saving lives. About 25 percent of young drivers, 15 to 20, who die in motor vehicle crashes have alcohol in their systems, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Alcohol is involved in 40 percent of all fatal crashes, according to the agency. Through a pair of "fatal vision" goggles designed to teach kids how alcohol impairs vision and judgment, everything looks bigger, closer and blurrier, said Tucson High School freshman Gabe DeAnda, 14, who participated in a DUI prevention program during his PE class on Friday. While driving a golf cart through an obstacle course, wearing the goggles and listening to Officer Corie Nolan with a blaring boom box shouting out "woo hoo!" in the passenger seat, DeAnda hit six traffic cones in 20 feet. |
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Then officers told him to imagine the cones were people. DeAnda said he learned a lesson: "Don't drink too much or don't drink at all if you're gonna drive." City police have arrested more than 200 teens for drinking and driving this year, Leotaud said. And around 300 underage youths were arrested each of the past two years. "Early education is the key," he said. Besides teens, more adults are getting the message about designating a driver, thanks to publicity campaigns with slogans like "You drink, you drive, you lose," Leotaud said. Another reason for fewer arrests this year could be changes at the Police Department itself, he said. The DUI squad was down two officers during the summer, when extra enforcement is in effect on holiday weekends. Those positions now are filled, Leotaud said. And it could be that regular patrol units were occupied with daily crime calls this year and didn't have enough time to patrol for drunken drivers on Tucson streets, he said. Some smaller departments in the metro area are bucking the trend in decreasing DUI arrests. Arrests have been up for the past two years in Marana, from 114 in 2003 to more than 180 so far this year, probably because more officers are getting trained to identify impaired drivers and the population is booming, said Sgt. Jose Alvarez of the Marana Police Department. That department has just one office dedicated to DUI enforcement. Despite patrol numbers, most drunken drivers are not caught, according to the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. About 1.4 million drunken drivers were arrested last year, according to the Justice department, but that was less than 1 percent of the 159 million self-reported episodes of impaired driving in one study. Officers in the Southern Arizona DUI Task Force will be patrolling for drunken drivers around the metro area on every weekend through New Year's. They made 32 arrests on Friday night and made a total of 330 traffic stops. This information is courtesy of http://www.fox11az.com/ |
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