Officer has made over 100 DWI arrests
Lawman with a conviction rate of 90 percent says the hours are long, but worth it
State Police officer Raymundo Lujan III has taken more than 100 drunken drivers off the street since January — but it’s the ones he doesn’t catch that stick with him.
“The ones you hear on the news the next morning,” Lujan said, of those who end up in a deadly crash, killing themselves or someone else. “Why couldn’t you be in that area? Why couldn’t you have stopped that person?”
The 26-year-old officer, recognized last month by his agency for his tripledigit arrest count and 90 percent conviction rate, said a lot more goes into a DWI conviction than just slapping the cuffs on.
“Very long hours — you have to have a passion for it,” he said. “You can honestly say that you saved somebody’s life at the end of the day.”
Whether it’s pretrial interviews, MVD hearings or the multitude of court settings, it all comes down to preparation and running through any “what if” scenarios that could impede conviction.
“It’s just like a test in high school or college, you prepare yourself. You don’t want to go in there and fail,” he said. “If the case gets dismissed someway, somehow, I learn from that mistake.”
Lujan’s supervisor, Sgt. Kurtis Ward, said mistakes are what make a great officer.
“That’s how you learn to win cases, is by losing,” he said. “You have to raise your game up.”
Ward said prosecuting DWIs is time consuming and, often, can be harder than homicide investigations.
“These guys literally work sometimes until the sun’s coming up, sleep for two hours, and then they’re back in court,” he said. “The dedication it takes to want to keep doing that — and the toll it takes on your personal life — that’s what sets them apart.”
What makes the State Police DWI unit so time consuming is what also makes for higher conviction rates, Ward said. Whereas the Albuquerque Police Department and Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office often have multiple officers involved in a single DWI arrest, Lujan will work an arrest alone from start to finish.
“Where cases get lost, more often than not, is by officers not showing up to court,” he said. “We make the stop, we do the investigation, we make the arrest, we do everything.”
Ward has known Lujan since the beginning, having met him, in the summer of 2015, as a full-time instructor at the academy, and now supervises Lujan’s unit.
“I’ve had a front row seat to all that,” Ward said. “To see him get to that level, in under two and a half years, it’s phenomenal.”
Aside from Lujan’s determination, Ward said the officer is not “hot-headed” or “heavy-handed” but respectful and professional.
With at least nine out of 10 of his arrests leading to convictions, and despite all the praise, Lujan remains humble about his achievements.
“I necessarily wouldn’t say that I’m better than anybody else,” he said. “It’s more or less I’ve always been this way.”
Although Lujan has been with the DWI unit since April 2016, the New Mexico native has wanted to be an officer as long as he can remember.
As a full-time DWI officer, Lujan is assigned to Albuquerque but also patrols around the state.
“We want to get that perspective that we are everywhere,” he said. “Our ultimate goal it to deteriorate it and make sure it doesn’t happen around the state, make sure the roads are a safer place.”
So far in 2017, at least one-third of all vehicle fatalities are alcohol-related, according to the New Mexico Department of Transportation. As of August, this year saw 92 alcohol-related fatalities while the yearly totals for 2016 and 2015 were 173 and 120, respectively.
For Lujan, a father of two, the most impactful arrests are those involving children.
He recalls one in particular when, after arresting a drunken driver, their daughter excitedly told him all about her new school clothes, backpack and shoes.
“She had no idea what was going on, but she was so excited about the following week when she was starting school,” he said. “That kind of touches home — it makes you take a deep breath.”
Lujan said every case is different and, although he sees his fair share of repeat offenders, they are all frustrating.
“There are so many different resources out there to prevent it. It doesn’t really matter if it’s the first time or their 10th time,” he said. “The blame falls on the individuals that continue to drink and drive.”
In addition to patrolling, court hearings and everything in between, Lujan also travels around the state, teaching recruits at academies the proper methods and standards to make DWI stops.
Despite being both mentally and emotionally draining, Lujan loves his job. He doesn’t plan to take his foot off the gas anytime soon.
“We are doing everything we can and, if there was anything else that we could do to better it, we would do it in a heartbeat,” he said. “I don’t plan on going anywhere.”