Labor Day DWI arrests down for second year
No-refusal checks ran from Friday night to Tuesday morning.
The Labor Day holiday weekend concluded with Austin police making 69 arrests for driving while intoxicated, a number that has dropped for the second year straight.
Police ran a no-refusal initiative from 9 p.m. Friday until 5 a.m. Tuesday. The number of arrests was down from 88 in 2014 and 106 in 2013. In 2012, Austin police arrested 95 people during the initiative.
Austin police routinely run no-refusal programs on holiday weekends and around large events, such as South by Southwest.
While the initiative “is an effort to enforce DWI laws,” the hope is that it will discourage drunken driving, said Austin police spokeswoman Veneza Bremner.
The Travis County sheriff ’s office did not participate in Austin police’s no-refusal program. However, deputies did make nine DWI arrests and one arrest for boating while intoxicated, spokesman Roger
Wade said.
Prior to the Labor Day weekend, Austin police had enforced an extended no-refusal polic y each day from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. from Aug. 21 through Thursday that resulted in 210 DWI arrests. Throughout the holiday weekend, no refusal was in effffffffffffect 24 hours a day, Bremner said.
Judges remain on call during no-refusal programs to issue search warrants for blood samples. During the Labor Day initiative, nearly half of the people arrested by Austin police on suspicion of drunken driving refused to give breath or blood samples voluntarily.
The highest recorded blood alcohol level was 0.205, which represents more than twice the legal limit of 0.08, police said.
Labor Day activities also left one man in his 20s injured after he jumped offff a cliffff Monday into Lake Travis at Pace Bend Park, injuring his back, according to Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services. The man’s condition was unknown Tuesday, but his injuries had been described as not life-threatening.
The only deaths police reported in the Austin area during the weekend were not related to drunken driving. Nury Velez-Derivera, 47, and Mauna Jaimes Alcan- tara, 48, in Leander died Saturday evening after a shooting happened during a domestic disturbance between the two ex-spouses.
The shooting took place at a home in the 1200 block of Drake Cove near U.S. 183 and Crystal Falls Parkway.
Police have not said who shot whom, but they said they were not looking for any suspects.
On Tuesday, Leander police were still waiting on autopsy reports before providing any further information about the manner of their deaths, Lt. Derral Partin said.