Friday, 18 February 2000
http://www.azstarnet.com/public/dnews/074-6884.html
By Hanna Miller
The Arizona Daily Star
Forty officers from the Southern Arizona DUI Task Force will
be stationed near the U.S./Mexico border this weekend to stop
American teen-agers from driving home drunk.
Department of Public Safety Sgt. Ed Slechta said the crackdown
was organized in response to several recent crashes in which cars'
teen-age drivers had been drinking at Mexican bars.
``We need to stop this before anyone else dies,'' Slechta said.
``Kids have looked at Mexico as a carte blanche and we need to
reel that carte in.''
Slechta said Southern Arizona teens cross the border to take advantage
of Mexican liquor laws, which allow 18-year-olds to drink alcohol.
Officers from DPS, the Tucson and Nogales police departments and
the Santa Cruz County and Pima County sheriff's departments will
stop teens traveling by car and on foot. Drunken teens will be
cited for possessing alcohol.
``If it's in your body, you're in possession,'' Slechta said.
He said the deployment, which will run tonight and tomorrow night,
is the task force's first major deployment near the border.
Task force members are also meeting with Mexican authorities to
develop a cooperative approach, he said. The group, called Hands
Across the Border, is asking Mexican police to enforce existing
liquor laws.
Four teens have died this year while returning from Mexican bars.
Two Sierra Vista teens were killed near Bisbee Jan. 8 when a car
carrying nine teens home from Agua Prieta, Sonora, rolled over
on Highway 80. And two teens from Rio Rico died after a Jan. 22
crash in Nogales, Sonora.
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