Officials in Colorado recently cracked down on drunk driving during a heightened enforcement period over the Halloween holiday. This enforcement period was started as part of Colorado’s campaign called The Heat Is On. During the period, which ran from a Friday to a Tuesday, police increased their patrols as well as their DUI checkpoints.
The Colorado State Patrol and Colorado Department of Transportation worked together to make the enforcement period possible in an effort to reduce drunk driving and resulting car wrecks. Last year around this time, almost 270 individuals were arrested for driving under the influence, and 22 of these people were from Colorado Springs. Colorado Springs had the third largest number of people taken into custody, with Aurora having 27 and Denver having 31.
Between mid-September and late October of this year, more than 150 people were arrested for drunk driving in Colorado Springs. In addition, from 2011 to 2015, crashes involving drunk driving during Halloween accounted for nearly 45 percent of traffic-related fatalities. They also accounted for 23 percent of the deaths of pedestrians nationwide.
A DUI can have serious consequences in Colorado, such as the loss of a license and jail time depending on an accused person’s circumstances. Fortunately, a person is always presumed innocent unless and until he or she is proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law. A close examination of the evidence that the prosecutors plan to present at trial to support the allegations may be a chief area of concentration for the criminal defense in such a case.
Source: gazette.com, “Impaired driving risk in Colorado Springs frightening enough to spark DUI crackdown“, Rachel Riley, Oct. 28, 2016