Law enforcement personnel from state troopers, city police and county sheriff's deputies collaborated in a strong push to reduce injury crashes caused by drunk drivers over the New Year’s holiday weekend.

It was a success.

“2022 was a strong year for the North Idaho DUI Task Force, filled with positive community interaction coupled with successful impaired driving detection and enforcement,” said Sgt. Justin Scotch. “The results from this weekend's operation are not only eye opening, but a testament to the importance of our efforts.”

Scotch leads the Idaho State Police on the targeted task force, and this weekend there were no injuries or fatal crashes related to impaired driving, fulfilling the goal for the weekend.

As charges for impaired driving go up, the amount of injury crashes go down, said Idaho State Police Lt. Allen Ashby.

Deputies, police and troopers on the task force issued 31 DUI charges, four felony drug possession charges and nine misdemeanor paraphernalia charges over the weekend.

But the point of the task force is not to charge DUIs, it’s to increase safety.

“Four years ago in October, we had a really terrible October,” said Coeur d'Alene Police Officer Nick Knoll. “We had six people killed in the month. In Kootenai County, we average about nine fatalities in a year, so to lose six people in one month was really significant. And five of those were caused by impaired drivers.”

Following that huge spike in deaths, the task force was formed in 2018, Knoll said.

“(But while) patrols were out trying to prevent crashes, we lost a sheriff’s deputy’s son to an impaired driver,” Knoll said. “The guy who hit him was drunk, he was high, he was wanted for a DUI at the time as well. And our DUI task force grew out of that to what it is today.”

From 2021 to 2022, the percentage of vehicle crashes that were caused by impaired drivers has gone down from 40% to just 25% Knoll said.

“There’s nowhere else in Idaho that’s doing this.” Knoll said to task force members. “This is a big deal. You’re a part of something that’s pretty awesome.”