As Montgomery County Disbands DUI Unit, Arrests Have Been 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 alarming in light of rising DUI arrest trends over the last two years.
Montgomery Fix obtained MCPD arrest records through Maryland Public Information Act requests covering 2023 through mid-2026. The records show DUI arrests were relatively stable in 2023 and 2024 before rising sharply late in 2024 and continuing at substantially higher levels through 2025 and 2026.
Data derived from MCPD arrest records obtained through Maryland Public Information Act request.
MCPD recorded 818 DUI arrests in 2023 and 802 in 2024. The numbers began creeping up at the end of that period and the ascent has not stopped. There were 103 DUI arrests in November 2024 and 110 in December. That’s more than 25 percent of the total annual number in the final two months of 2024. In 2025, MCPD recorded 1,168 DUI arrests, a 46% increase from 2024. December 2025 was the peak, with 150 DUI arrests, the most in any month in the records examined. Through June of this year, MCPD recorded another 559 DUI arrests, putting 2026 on pace to meet or exceed 2025 arrest levels. Whether that happens depends largely on enforcement.
The numbers don't prove that more people were driving drunk. Arrests measure enforcement as well as behavior. A rise in arrests can mean more impaired drivers, more proactive police work or both. Whatever the explanation, the data raises serious questions about the implications of eliminating the specialized unit responsible for DUI enforcement.
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.
