DUII Incidents in Bend Decrease for Third Straight Year

Despite a holiday season uptick, the Bend Police Department arrested fewer drivers in 2025 on suspicion of driving intoxicated than previous years.

Anticipating an increase in driving under the influence, Bend PD announced that it had “stepped up its presence in the downtown area on New Year’s Eve in an attempt to cut down on intoxicated drivers and other problems that historically have arisen on this holiday.”

Additional enforcement also came with outreach. “School resource officers set up a table in downtown Bend and took between 150 and 200 breath samples of community members over the course of the evening,” a department press release stated. “Participation was voluntary and designed to help community members understand their levels of intoxication.”

Bend PD made a dozen DUII arrests between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day. At least three of these incidents involved drug use, “including inhalants and marijuana,” per the department. Two arrests involved vehicle crashes.

From Dec. 31 to Jan. 4, cops made six DUII arrests in Bend. Less than an hour into New Year’s Eve, an individual was “found unconscious in the Taco Bell drive-through” and blew a 0.23 percent BAC.

On Jan. 4, Bend PD responded to an additional incident. A 21-year-old Portland man crashed a Ford F-350 in the Orchard District. When officers arrived, they administered Narcan to the passed-out driver, whose vehicle was found to be stolen out of Multnomah County, police said. The DUII arrest was processed by the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office, who, 30 minutes earlier, had initiated a traffic stop on Highway 97 before the suspect eluded deputies.

Pulling up drunk to a drive-thru and nodding out during a police chase are eye-grabbing exceptions to a statistical trend, which shows Bend Police interactions with impaired drivers reducing over the last three years. The year 2025 saw 138 fewer DUII arrests than 2022 – a 20% decrease.

As seen in other Northwest cities, the presence of officers specifically dedicated to impaired driving enforcement may be driving this trend. However, Bend PD spokesperson Sheila Miller stated, “We believe staffing issues are the likely reason that we have seen our DUII numbers drop over the past few years, not because fewer people are driving intoxicated in our community.”

Still, she spoke about the importance of dedicated enforcement. “In 2025, we arrested 554 people for DUII, at all hours of the day, in every part of town, and from all walks of life… Our dedicated DUII/Distracted Driving officers are a key part of our aggressive enforcement of intoxicated drivers,” Miller told the Source.

“All of our officers are trained to conduct DUII investigations, and they do. But having highly trained officers who can focus on this criminal behavior instead of being pulled away to other patrol calls goes a long way to keeping Bend’s roads safe for all users,” she concluded.

The BAC limit in Oregon is 0.08, in line with federal guidelines.

Unlike alcohol impairment, marijuana intoxication cannot be accurately quantified. While “zero tolerance” states like Pennsylvania prosecute drivers who test positive for any trace of THC cannabinoids (which can remain in the human body for days or weeks), Oregon instead requires arresting officers to prove impairment through field sobriety tests or other observation, though drug tests may still be taken as part of investigation.

Editor’s Note: Updated 1/8 with a statement from Bend PD that “staffing issues are the likely reason” for the statistic decrease, not dedicated DUII enforcement.

This article appears in the Source January 8, 2026.