{"id":95734,"date":"2019-02-04T19:17:11","date_gmt":"2019-02-05T02:17:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/snowdown-brings-winter-fun-increased-crime-to-durango\/"},"modified":"2019-02-04T19:17:11","modified_gmt":"2019-02-05T02:17:11","slug":"snowdown-brings-winter-fun-increased-crime-to-durango","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/snowdown-brings-winter-fun-increased-crime-to-durango\/","title":{"rendered":"Snowdown brings winter fun, increased crime to Durango"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Durango\u2019s Snowdown was originally conceived in 1979 to bring something fun and festive to Colorado\u2019s long winter, and while the annual event still fulfills that mission, it also brings a lot of work for local law enforcement.<\/p>\n

Cmdr. Ray Shupe said through the entirety of Snowdown, which runs Wednesday through Sunday, Durango police handled 513 calls. Of those, 251 were dispatched calls for service and 262 were officer-initiated, meaning an officer created the incident number without receiving a call.<\/p>\n

During this year\u2019s Snowdown, there were five arrests for drunken driving. In one of those instances, a single vehicle crashed into a snowbank on north College Drive. No injuries were reported.<\/p>\n

Also, Durango police responded to 22 calls for disorderly conduct, leading to 3 arrests\/citations.<\/p>\n

In all, Durango police made 18 arrests, though not all of those can be attributed to Snowdown revelers, Shupe said.<\/p>\n

But, for comparison, Shupe said the weekend prior to Snowdown, Durango Police received a total of 408 calls \u2013 200 dispatched calls for service and 218 officer-initiated. There were only two DUIs. And police dealt with only six disorderly calls that lead to one arrest\/citation.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a busy weekend for us, but we know it\u2019s coming and we staff for it,\u201d Shupe said.<\/p>\n

On Monday, Durango Police posted to its Facebook page<\/a> a \u201cweekend recap\u201d of some of the nefarious activity during Durango\u2019s winter event:<\/p>\n

On Friday night, \u201ca very drunk male with a facial injury and a knife was contacted outside of a bar downtown. He was relieved of the knife, but was combative when officers tried to assist him. He was taken to the La Plata County Jail.\u201d<\/em>\u201cA very drunk\/high male with a serious eye injury was contacted in front of a liquor store in Durango. He became combative in the ambulance.\u201d<\/em>On Saturday afternoon, \u201cofficers were busy taking lost property reports from the previous evening.\u201d<\/em>On Saturday night, \u201cofficers responded to multiple intoxicated fueled disturbances and medical calls.\u201d<\/em>Every Snowdown, the Durango Police Department readjusts its schedules for staff to have more officers on duty during times of high call volume. This year, swing shift officers stayed late to deal with bar patrons.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a reminder that even though Snowdown is an extremely fun and popular event that many people look forward to attending every year, consuming too much alcohol can detract from the overall meaning and purpose of Snowdown,\u201d Durango police wrote in its post. \u201cSo let\u2019s have fun, but please be responsible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Colorado State Patrol Capt. Adrian Driscoll said the Snowdown weekend was \u201cvery uneventful\u201d for Colorado State Patrol troopers. There were no major or significant crashes from Wednesday to Sunday, he said.<\/p>\n

In a normal weekend, CSP will make three to five DUI arrests. Over Snowdown, CSP put more troopers out overnight, so the number of people arrested increased a little, but not by much. Official numbers would be available Friday, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a very uneventful weekend, which was nice,\u201d Driscoll said.<\/p>\n

The La Plata County Sheriff\u2019s Office did not return multiple calls seeking comment.<\/p>\n

jromeo@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

reported 18 arrests from Friday through Sunday night<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":95735,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[480,1065,1901,4259,1402],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-95734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-dui","tag-durango-police-department","tag-la-plata-county-sheriff","tag-newsletter-sign-up","tag-snowdown"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95734\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95734"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=95734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}