BUTTE — Thousands of people had a good time celebrating St. Patrick’s Day in Uptown Butte; however, law enforcement said too many people made the bad decision to drink and drive over the weekend.
“It’s disappointing we had that many DUIs given the fact that we advertise not to drink and drive, there’s free rides home from the bar, the cabs were running, Uber was running, Lyft was running,” said Butte Sheriff Ed Lester.
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Butte Police reported a total of 39 arrests between March 14 and March 18, with 24 of those arrests for driving under the influence.
“The DUI thing is just a matter of planning before you go and not deciding to drive home after you’ve been drinking,” the sheriff said.
The good news is there weren't major problems during Monday’s celebration.
“We only made 15 arrests for disturbance-type situations, some of them weren’t related to the celebration itself. So, it’s a pretty good weekend given the number of people celebrating,” said Lester.
Lester noted there have been some St. Patrick’s Day celebrations in Butte that involved more than 100 arrests. Law enforcement has since changed tactics to prevent things from getting out of control.
“We have a lot of high visibility with the Montana Highway Patrol; with our officers, we’re on foot,” said Lester. “We try to get to the disturbances as quickly as we possibly can to minimize the number of people involved and it works well for us and we’re fortunate we didn’t have a lot of serious injuries or anything like that. There were a few fistfights and those kinds of things. But when you have that many people in the Uptown area drinking, you’re going to see a few of those.”
