Local law enforcement officials are celebrating a recent report from the Wyoming Department of Transportation showing zero alcohol-related traffic crashes, injuries or fatalities occurred last month in Fremont County.
It’s the first time Fremont County has recorded zero alcohol-related traffic crashes, injuries or fatalities “since that report has come out,” Lander Police Department chief Scott Peters said this week, calling last month’s achievement “a win.”
“We were ranked as the worst in the country, (and) we just went a month without anything happening in our community,” Peters told the Lander City Council during a regular meeting Tuesday. “So our roads are definitely a lot safer.”
He attributed much of the improvement to the work of the new Fremont County DUI Team, which conducted its most recent operation last Friday evening in Lander.
“That night, we stopped 138 cars between 5 p.m. and 1 o’clock in the morning here in Lander and the Hudson area,” Peters said. “We ended up with a couple DUIs and five other arrests, so we got a lot of people off the streets.”
In addition, he noted, local dispatchers didn’t receive any calls for service on “this side of the county” around that same timeframe – between 4 p.m. Friday and 9 a.m. Saturday.
“Literally all … crime disappeared out of our side of the county (for) about 17 hours,” Peters said. “That’s a win in itself, (because) we want to use the team to get the drunk drivers off the road and keep our roads safer but also keep our crime down. … That’s what we actually accomplished here Friday night.”