State Patrol Named Top DUI Enforcement Agency In the Nation

Nearly 20,000 drunken-driving arrests later, the Washington State Patrol has been named the top DUI enforcement agency in the United States for 2010.

The International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) recognizes an agency’s “year-round efforts to detect and apprehend impaired drivers and to address impaired driving through policies, officer training, and public information and education.”

State Patrol Chief John Batiste has told front-line troopers they have no higher priority than getting impaired drivers off the road.

“We consider every DUI arrest a potential life saved,” Batiste said in a news release. “We never know which drunks will kill, but we know with certainty that some of them will.

“We’re committed to taking all of them off the road.”

Law-enforcement agencies in Washington arrest about 40,000 impaired drivers each year, with the State Patrol accounting for about half that number.

In June, WSP and partner agencies announced interim results of work by the Target Zero Teams in King, Pierce and Snohomish Counties. The multi-agency teams do intense patrols at locations where DUI-related fatal crashes have previously occurred. Preliminary data indicates that the teams saved 70 lives during the first year of a two-year demonstration project.

On Friday, a new law went into effect that requires the towing of vehicles driven by those arrested for DUI. Pressed by WSP in the 2011 legislature, there is now a mandatory 12-hour hold on those vehicles.

In 2007, IACP named the WSP the best state police agency of its size. The following year, the Patrol won the Championship Category, having competed against the previous years’ first place winners of all agency sizes.

The award will be officially presented at the annual IACP Conference in October.