The University of Wyoming Police Department was recently awarded a grant from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention for the national Enforcing Underage Drinking Laws (EUDL) program.
EUDL provides training and increased enforcement capabilities for departments to target underage drinking, providing alcohol to minors, fake IDs, and other such violations, says UWPD Chief Troy Lane.
For the last few years, the Wyoming Association of Sheriffs and Chiefs of Police has collected statistical data regarding alcohol factors at the time of arrest across the state of Wyoming.
"Based on this data we have seen that alcohol is a contributing factor in more than 85 percent of the arrests that UWPD makes," Lane says. "Obviously if we want to prevent or at least deter other crimes, we can do so by targeting alcohol violations."
The grant will pay to place additional officers on the street that can specifically target underage drinking and other alcohol offenses. UWPD Officers will likely also team up with Laramie PD officers in this effort during the coming year.
"We simply want to get the word out early that we will be targeting this behavior and aggressively enforcing underage drinking laws," Lane says. "Though we have always aggressively targeted this issue, this grant will afford us the ability to devote more time and effort to do so."
For more information, call Lane at (307) 766-5179. For information about the EUDL program, call Marilyn Patton, the state EUDL coordinator, at (307) 777-7071, or (307) 421-9127.
