Center to target DWIs
Navajo Nation, McKinley, San Juan counties to add more police officers

By Pamela G. Dempsey
Staff Writer

WINDOW ROCK — If statistics won't stop you from drinking and driving, perhaps more law enforcement will.

The DWI Resource Center, a non-profit New Mexico based organization that promotes and markets anti-drunk-driving campaigns, is now targeting the Navajo Nation.

Through a government grant, the center has hired two full-time law enforcement officers each for five counties and the Navajo Nation, dedicated to the arrest of drunk drivers.

The counties rank the highest among drunk driving and include Bernalillo, Doa Ana, McKinley, Rio Arriba, and San Juan.

"If you have more law enforcement, it reduces serious death and injury," said Linda Atkinson, executive director of The DWI Resource Center.

The top deterrent for drunk drivers is not the fear of hurting people, said the center's marketing coordinator, Shannon Johnston.

"It's the fear of getting caught," she said.

Johnston said that, according to data, 70 percent of all "so called first-timers" drunk drivers who are arrested for the first time have actually driven drunk an average of 200 times to 1,000 times before getting caught by police officers.

And the Navajo Nation has had its share.

The Navajo Department of Highway Safety reported that the tribe made more than 8,000 arrests for DUI and DWI in 2005 with Shiprock at 1,900 arrests and Chinle at 1,660 arrests leading the list.

This has increased since the Navajo Nation lowered the legal limit of blood alcohol content from .10 to .08 in 2001, making it easier for police officers to issue citations.

The high incidence of tribal members involved in accidents of serious injury or death prompted the State of New Mexico to involve the Navajo Nation in this grant, Atkinson said.

Edmund Yazzie, a former Navajo Nation police officer, has seen first-hand the effects drunk driving has had on the tribe. He's the center's new Navajo Nation DWI coordinator.

While he acknowledges that the tribe does have a problem with DWIs, he said lack of information is one obstacle that needs to be overcome first.

"We need to make (people) aware (of tribal laws) on the reservation," Yazzie said.

Through his job, he hopes to encourage the Navajo Nation Council to consider stiffer penalties for drunk drivers as well as consider sharing information with bordering states' motor vehicle divisions.

Though the door is open for the Navajo Nation to share its citation records with New Mexico, it has yet to do so.

If it were to share records, then a repeat drunk driver from the Navajo Nation could face penalties as a repeat offender if caught in New Mexico.

The hesitation may lie with sovereignty, said George Hardeen, spokesman for the Office of the President.

But, he said, Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley Jr. and First Lady Viki Shirley both of whom are proactive in the fight to reduce drunk driving would be willing to support tribal legislation that allows these records to be shared.

"DUIs are racially indiscriminate," Hardeen said. "They'll kill you and hurt you."

On the Net: http://www.dwiresourcecenter.org