Colorado Springs police made 20 DUI-related arrests over the Fourth of July weekend

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) -- Colorado saw 190 arrests for impaired driving over the Fourth of July weekend. According to the Colorado Department of Transportation, twenty of those were in Colorado Springs.

There were also nine traffic fatalities over the holiday weekend and more than half of those deaths involved a suspected impaired driver. CDOT said that compared to the first six months of 2019, deaths involving impaired drivers had increased 73.8% in Colorado this year. 

To help combat this potentially deadly issue on our roads, a heightened enforcement period to crack down on drunk and impaired driving starts Thursday and runs through July 20.

CDOT said that from Jan. 1 through May 31 of this year, there had been 1,901 DUI citations, with 1,213 involving alcohol only.

As has been the case in the past, El Paso leads the state with DUI citations at 231, Adams had 154, Weld had 146 and Jefferson had 143.

“A DUI is not a minor traffic violation. You’re looking at months, potentially years, of your time to work through the process, costing thousands of dollars and leaving you with a criminal record,” said Col. Matthew Packard, Chief of the Colorado State Patrol.