A SADD Day
Gallup High students continue tradition of marching against drunken driving

Marchers in the DWI Awareness walk make their way down Historic Route 66 on Saturday. The walk raised awareness about the high cost associated with drinking and driving in McKinley County. [Photo by Brian Leddy/Independent]

By Bill Donovan
Staff Writer

GALLUP — More than 20 years ago, a march led by Gallup Mayor Eddie Munoz to Santa Fe to protest weak liquor laws in the state led to stiffer laws that cut down traffic fatalities.

So it seems fitting that a march this weekend sponsored by the SADD chapter at Gallup High School should bring out problems in enforcing liquor laws that still exist today.

About 25 members of the school's Students Against Drunk Driving had a march from JFK Mid-School to the Gallup Cultural Center under cold and cloudy skies to bring attention to the problem drunk drivers are still causing the Gallup community.

Joe Sanchez, one of the SADD members who took part in the march, said his fellow students realize that more needs to be done.

"One of the reasons we did the march," he said, "is to show that students do care about the community."

After eating hot dogs, the students stayed outside the cultural center for almost an hour listening to speeches in the cold weather from experts in the field such as Rachel O'Connor, who heads the state's DWI program, and McKinley County District Attorney Karl Gillson.

'Slap on the wrist'
The main topic Gillson was questioned on was why so many if not all of the people who are arrested on DWI charges that go to magistrate court get off with "a slap on the wrist," serving only a couple of days no matter how many DWI offenses they have been charged with.

Gillson said that the determination of how much of a sentence a person gets rests with the judges and the light sentences here as compared to Farmington where even a first offender gets 28 days in jail comes back to the kinds of sentences that judges give out; however, in some cases it's the system and not the judges that are at fault, he said.

There are cases. he said, where the prosecution knows that people have had former DWIs but can't present proof in court because of the inability to get records.

"Past prosecutions don't always get counted," he said. "The person may not have had a defense attorney in the previous case and if that's the case, we're not legally allowed to use that to enhance sentencing in a case."

If people are upset about this, he said, they should make it known to the judges who have to be re-elected.

"When they come up for re-election, the voters should question them on their record," he said.

O'Connor agreed, saying that judges have minimums set by the state, but they are allowed to go further than this if they want up to 90 days on a first offense.

In the cases in Gallup, the defendant usually gets time served, which is the amount of time it takes the offender to post bail in some cases, less than a day and in most others, three or four days.

Attend hearings
O'Connor said one solution to this is to have concerned citizens sit in on the court and see just what happens during the trials.

"If you have a judge not doing their job, there are ways to hold a judge accountable," she said.

And if the citizens feel it is necessary, other steps can be taken.

She pointed out that in the five counties with the highest DWIs, three of them allow law enforcement officers to confiscate cars. The two that don't are McKinley and San Juan.

She said the state is now conducting a program to determine just how effective the magistrate courts are in handling these kinds of problems.

Within the next few months, citizens will be asked to monitor court proceedings in McKinley and other counties and report their findings back to the state to see if new laws need to be put in place to cut down on drunk driving.

There's concern in the state because the number of drunk driving fatalities is on the rise.

After getting tough on drunk driving in the 1980s, the state saw the annual average of 350 to 400 fatalities a year because of drunk driving go down to the 230 level.

But since 2000, that number has been going back up, making state officials realize that something more needs to be done.

124 deaths
Between 2000 and 2004, 124 people died in McKinley County in alcohol-related accidents, according to figures released by the SADD Chapter. That represents 56 percent of all motor vehicle fatalities during that period.

Other figures brought out by the march:

• Nearly five percent of all McKinley County families have had a family member killed or injured in a DWI crash between 2000 and 2004.
  
  
• The total economic cost for DWI-related crashes in 2004 was estimated at $94.5 million, including costs for medical care, property damage and time off the job.