The Houston police chief says a citywide crackdown has led to a 75% increase in the number of people arrested for drunken driving in the first six months of this year.
Chief Art Acevedo said Monday that Houston police logged more than 3,850 arrests for driving while intoxicated, up from the approximately 2,200 arrests in the first six months of last year.
Acevedo provided the numbers while warning against drunken driving over the extended Fourth of July holiday weekend.
He says the department also is working with the Harris County district attorney's office to more quickly prosecute DWI cases.
An earlier Houston Chronicle investigation that analyzed data from 2001 to 2016 found that the nine counties in the Houston region had more fatal drunken-driving wrecks than any other large metro area in the U.S.
