Cops and Courts

In the wake of the drunken driving deaths of two Missoula teenagers last month, City Council members on Wednesday hosted a community dialogue to examine the scourge of impaired driving.

Councilman Dave Strohmaier, who leads the Public Safety and Health Committee, assembled a panel of community leaders with a breadth of experience in dealing with the problem of drinking and driving in Missoula. The result was a two-hour meditation on the devastation of drinking and driving, its burden on state and local resources, and Missoula’s responsibility to take aim at the issue locally, and then prevail upon Montana’s lawmakers.

“City Council needs to play a stronger role as the governing body of this municipality to address DUI, beginning with pushing forward this community dialogue on DUI in Missoula and Montana,” Strohmaier said.

Missoula Police Chief Mark Muir provided a snapshot of DUI arrests in the past six years, and said his police officers arrest more than 800 impaired drivers in a typical year. He used the term “impaired driving,” he said, because more than

50 percent of the blood samples drawn from defendants in DUI cases contained prescription drugs or cannabis.

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