In 2018, seven people were killed in alcohol and/or drug-related crashes in Cherokee County. This area continues to see an increase in drug-related crashes year over year. Cherokee County is consistently among the top counties in Oklahoma for drug-related crashes*.

The goal is simple: to make Cherokee County and Tahlequah as safe as possible by getting impaired drivers off the roads. A high-visibility patrol means that additional deputies and troopers will be on duty looking for impaired drivers across the area before, during and after the checkpoint.

The media is invited to attend this checkpoint to help us raise awareness about the impaired driving problem in Oklahoma. Interviews with members of the Oklahoma Highway Patrol will be available. To coordinate times, locations, and interviews, please email Cody.McDonell@dps.ok.gov.

The ENDUI enforcement team coordinates multi-jurisdictional events on a regular basis, including sobriety checkpoints and saturation patrols. These efforts are needed to impact Oklahoma’s impaired driving problem across the state. The locations of these activities are driven by data from the Oklahoma Highway Safety Office and by local request.

* County and state-wide statistics are calculated using crash data from the Oklahoma Department of Public Safety and vehicle traffic data from the Oklahoma Department of Transportation by the Oklahoma Highway Safety Office (OHSO). Calculating rates using Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) allows the OHSO to more accurately compare largely populated counties to less populated counties.

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The ENDUI Oklahoma program is a program of the Oklahoma Highway Safety Office and is funded through impaired driving grants from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.