KCPD officer singlehandedly made 301 DUI arrests last year

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV) - The Kansas City Police Department says one of their officers made 301 DUI arrest in 2021 without assistance.

“No one in Missouri arrests impaired drivers more than KCPD’s Doug Davidson,” the police department said in a Facebook post.

The department said Officer Davidson made the arrests all by himself and is one of seven officers assigned to the KCPD’s DUI Squad.

The DUI squad doesn’t operate like a patrol unit, but rather invests time and resources solely to finding impaired drivers. The KCPD said this type of group is rare in the region.

“Every person I arrest for driving under the influence, I feel I either saved their life or saved somebody else’s,” Officer Davidson said.

“The likelihood of them crashing before they get home is high,” he said. “At least I did my part to help someone not get that knock on the door telling them their loved ones are injured or not coming home.”

According to an article on the KCPD’s website, Officer Davidson said the number of impaired drivers is skyrocketing. Last year, the DUI squad made 1,271 arrests. Officer Davidson’s 301 arrests last year are the most made by a single person the state of Missouri, they said.

Officer Davidson has been with the KCPD for 11 years. He used to patrol entertainment districts and highways, so he’d respond to fatal crashes. Then, he joined the DUI squad in 2018.

“I thought if I went to the DUI Unit, I could stop people from doing that,” Davidson recalls. “I went there to prevent crashes.”