St. Cloud Police Arrest 37 During DWI Holiday Enforcement Campaign

ST. CLOUD - Over 2,500 people were arrested between November 25th and January 2nd in Minnesota during the holiday season DWI enforcement campaign.

According to numbers released by the Department of Public Safety, St. Cloud Police arrested 37 people, the Stearns County Sheriff's Office arrested 34 and the area State Patrol district 2600 arrested 34 more.

The highest BAC level in a St. Cloud arrest was .23. The highest BAC level measured in the state was an arrest made by the Minnetonka Police Department at .40.

State Patrol Sgt. Jesse Grabow says the number of holiday season DWI arrests in the state have held steady recently.

"This is what we've seen for the last five years as being the average, still too high and unfortunately all these examples of DWI arrests are all too common."

More than 300 law enforcement agencies took part in the campaign. The Minnesota State Patrol District 2400 (Oakdale) had the most DWI arrests during the campaign with 173.

Grabow says alcohol plays a large part in fatal crashes in Minnesota.

"Last year we had approximately 400 people killed on our roadways in Minnesota and a large amount of those did involve alcohol. It's one of those things we're trying to target to reduce the number of those serious injury and fatal crashes."