McKinley County launches summer DWI checkpoints and patrols

McKinley County Sheriff’s Office will run ENDWI checkpoints and saturation patrols across the county from July through September 2026, with deputies also enforcing seatbelt use and other traffic laws on roadways and at checkpoints. The summer sweep is aimed at impaired drivers during a stretch of heavy travel, late-night traffic and holiday driving, when crashes are more likely on McKinley County’s high-speed corridors and rural roads.

The crackdown comes as New Mexico data underscore why the county is being watched closely. A New Mexico DWI report found McKinley County had the highest alcohol-involved fatal crash rate among the state’s 10 counties with the highest number of such crashes in 2023, at 2.2 per 10,000 county residents. That rate puts the county at the center of a statewide traffic-safety push focused on stopping drunk and drug-impaired drivers before they cause deadly wrecks.

The enforcement is tied to funding from the New Mexico Department of Transportation Traffic Safety Division, which supports overtime grants for local agencies working in high-risk areas statewide. The division describes its impaired-driving program as performance-based, evidence-based and data-driven, with money used for enforcement, training, education and equipment. In practice, that means McKinley County can put more deputies on the road during the months when impaired driving is most likely to end in a crash, injury or arrest.

Past operations in the Gallup area show how quickly those efforts can translate into citations and arrests. A September 2023 New Mexico State Police operation in McKinley County around Gallup produced 76 traffic stops and more than 80 citations, including one DWI arrest, 28 speeding tickets, two child-restraint violations, two stop-sign violations and two seatbelt violations. That kind of stop count shows how sobriety checkpoints and saturation patrols can catch more than alcohol violations alone, turning up unsafe speed, restraint and seatbelt problems at the same time.

The McKinley County DWI Task Force has said the summer campaign is a joint effort involving the sheriff’s office, Gallup Police and New Mexico State Police. For families driving between Gallup, nearby communities and the county’s long rural stretches, the message is plain: checkpoints and patrols will be visible, seatbelt violations will be enforced and impaired drivers are likely to be stopped before they can put others at risk.