Anyone who has read stories about Danny Bettcher, a man from Fergus Falls who was convicted of drunken driving for the 22nd time last year in Becker County, should realize the true problem when it comes to laws pertaining to driving while intoxicated – or DWI – in Minnesota.

Monday, March 05, 2001

Anyone who has read stories about Danny Bettcher, a man from Fergus Falls who was convicted of drunken driving for the 22nd time last year in Becker County, should realize the true problem when it comes to laws pertaining to driving while intoxicated – or DWI – in Minnesota.

The Legislature is hard at work trying to lower the blood alcohol standard from 0.10 to 0.08 percent, partly because of threats that the federal government will take away highway funding if it doesn’t. A lower standard, law enforcement officials contend, will be difficult to enforce, and may or may not be effective. Instituting a felony drunk-driving law, however, would be far more effective tool in getting chronic DWI offenders the penalties they deserve.

The law, proposed by some legislators, would essentially be a three-strikes-and-you’re-out deal: an individual could be charged with a felony following a fourth DWI in a 10-year-period, requiring multiple years of prison time.

Simply put, a person that has three DWIs in a 10-year-period, somehow manages to find a way to drive and get a fourth, certainly deserves more than one year in jail, which is the maximum set by law at this time.

Individuals who have more than 10 – or in Bettcher’s case, more than 20 – are just as dangerous as any violent criminal.

If the Legislature wants to pass a bill that will truly be effective in reducing the number of accidents caused by drunken driving, it ought to allow judges to put chronic drunken drivers in prison for more than a year.