Tucson, AZ - On December 5, 2010 the Tucson Police Department will eliminate one-half of its drunk driving squad. The cuts are in response to budget cuts, which make it financially impossible to have DUI officers on duty every night.

Throughout Arizona state funding for DUI enforcement has been cut. Add that to the fact that the Arizona Governor's Office of Highway Safety lost nearly $3 million in federal grants and it becomes apparent why, despite the arguable advantages of having more trained DUI officers on duty, cities like Tucson simply can not make it work.

Arizona has historically been one of the most deadly states when it comes to drinking and driving. A significant number of those deaths have been on Reservation land. Through 2009 Arizona consistently made the list of the ten most deadly states when it comes to impaired driving.

Over the past decade, Arizona law enforcement agencies across the state have worked with the Department of Public Safety (Arizona's highway patrol) in concerted efforts called the Arizona DUI task-force. The task-force events typically surround holiday weekends and involve stepped up patrols and roadblocks.

In 2010 the fatality numbers in Arizona dropped enough to take the state out of the top-ten most dangerous states. Because of this, the state lost much of its federal funding.

The DUI officers in Tucson have invested more time into drunk driving training, and have more arrest experience than the average officer. While all officers get some impaired driving enforcement training at the police academy, many of the more advanced courses are elective.

Tucson was one of the first cities in the country to train their DUI officers as phlebotomists. This means that they are qualified to draw blood from suspects rather than, or in addition to, administering breath tests.

Most of the DUI officers volunteer for the program because they are passionate about making a difference by helping to remove dangerous drivers from the road. Critics argue that officers in Arizona DUI units routinely top the pay charts in terms of overtime pay, some earning into the six figures.

With the decreased enforcement, state and federal funding, it could be in interesting and, in terms of lives lost, costly experiment. On the other hand, if the number of DUI related fatalities does not rise with less specialized enforcement, it will indicate that another factor is in play.