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As always, we would never encourage anyone to drive drunk under any circumstance — especially in this county — but if you do and your drunk route home doesn’t run through Mesa, maybe it should.
Mesa Police Sergeant Fabian Cota says budget cuts and processing time in the Mesa Police Department are letting drunk drivers off the hook.
Now that every drunk driver in town knows where to go, let’s find out why.
Cota tells 92.3 (KTAR) that for the last three years drunk-driving arrests have declined by nearly 20 percent in Mesa, because processing offenders is taking officers off the streets.
Police never seem to give themselves enough credit. Maybe the Mesa Police Department is simply doing its job in detering people from driving drunk? Probably not the case when there are budget implications.
See, with more money, the department can hire more officers to go on DUI patrol, while other officers are busy processing the drunks they’ve already rounded up.
Similarly, by not taking the time to produce its dumbass Cops-wannabe TV show “On the Beat,” it might free up some time to go make another bust or two.
Cota says officers who used to pluck up to eight drunk drivers off the street each night are now only picking up one or two, and it is putting the public at risk.
Umm, not the drunk-driving public — though we’re sure Cota would argue that they, too, are in danger of getting injured or killed by their bad actions.
