As Montgomery County Disbands DUI Unit, Arrests Are Rising
The Montgomery County Police Department (MCPD) announced Friday that it was disbanding the unit specifically responsible for getting impaired drivers off the road. The next night, a suspected drunken driver went the wrong way on Interstate 270 and slammed head-on into another vehicle, killing a mother and her 23-year-old daughter.
The crash was tragic; the timing striking. It raises an uncomfortable question for a county that has promised to eliminate traffic deaths by 2030: What happens to impaired-driving enforcement when the police department eliminates the specialized unit responsible for it?
MCPD says the answer is that enforcement will continue. The department cited declining staffing levels and operational needs in announcing the elimination of its Alcohol Initiatives Unit. Officers assigned to the unit will be reassigned to vacant positions elsewhere in the department. According to Assistant Chief David McBain, MCPD will continue DUI enforcement through its Holiday Alcohol Task Force, Summer Alcohol Task Force, saturation patrols and sobriety checkpoints, with help from regional law enforcement agencies.
That's the official explanation. If it is uncomfortable in light of Saturday night's fatal wreck, it should be especially so given DUI arrest trends over the last three years. The numbers are going up.
Montgomery Fix obtained arrest records for the Montgomery County Police Department, City of Gaithersburg Police Department, and City of Rockville Police Department for the three year period spanning 2023 through 2025, and combined those with publicly available Maryland State Police DUI arrest statistics. These records show DUI arrests in Montgomery County rising 5-6% annually:
2023 – 1,544
2024 – 1,637
2025 – 1,717
Actually DUI arrests in Montgomery County were even higher. The figures here do not include arrests made by other agencies such as Maryland-National Capital Park Police, Maryland Transportation Authority Police, and Metro Transit Police Department.
Data derived from arrest records obtained through Maryland Public Information Act requests and publicly available police reports.
Vision Zero Relies on Enforcement
Montgomery County adopted Vision Zero in 2016, promising to eliminate traffic fatalities and severe injuries by 2030. Ten years later, that goal seems impossible. As Montgomery Fix reported earlier this month, 38 people were killed in traffic crashes in Montgomery County in 2025. That is well above the roughly 33-fatality annual level during the first four years of Vision Zero. The county's own independent assessment has identified shortcomings in coordination, enforcement, project evaluation and implementation.
On August 18, Montgomery Fix reported that at least 34 people had already been killed on Montgomery County roads this year. In less than two weeks, the toll has risen to 39, including the two people killed on I-270 on Saturday, pedestrians struck and killed in Gaithersburg and Aspen Hill, and a school bus driver who ran into a tree. That’s already one more fatality than the 38 recorded last year. At this pace, the county appears likely to meet or exceed the 58 deaths recorded in 2006, the highest annual total in two decades.
The county's Vision Zero program includes engineering, automated enforcement, education and police enforcement. Impaired-driving prevention is explicitly part of that strategy, yet MCPD is eliminating the specialized unit devoted to one of the most dangerous forms of driver behavior.
The department says the work will continue, and that the Holiday Alcohol Task Force and Summer Alcohol Task Force aren't going away. Neither are saturation patrols or checkpoints. What the department hasn’t said is that DUI enforcement will continue at the same level. If it lacks enough officers to maintain the specialized unit, that seems unlikely.
The county has spent a decade telling residents that traffic deaths are unacceptable. Vision Zero was built around the idea that deaths should not simply be accepted as the inevitable cost of driving. The county's prevention plan calls for engineering, education, and enforcement. Three-legged tables are already unstable. Remove one leg, and a crash is inevitable.
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Correction Notice: This article has been updated to include more accurate arrests statistics obtained from the Montgomery County Police Department.
