Boating Arrests Down Slow Summer, Heightened Awareness, Fewer Patrols All May Have Played Role

The number of drunken boaters arrested on Lake Coeur d’Alene plummeted this year.

Kootenai County lake patrols ticketed roughly 16 people compared with 45 last summer.

“We’re way down this year, and it might be attributed to kind of a slow summer,” said Kootenai County sheriff’s deputy Matt Street. “The heat really seems to bring it out.”

Besides cool weather during much of the summer, several other factors likely led to the nearly two-thirds drop in arrests.

Boaters were more careful this summer, one lakefront business owner speculated.

Dave Kelly, owner of Harrison’s Gateway Marina, said controversy over emphasis patrols at Priest Lake got people thinking about drinking and boating.

Simmering tension between some locals and Bonner County marine deputies culminated late last month in a shootout between a marine deputy and a handyman. Deputies on Priest Lake made 13 arrests for operating under the influence this summer.

Many Lake Coeur d’Alene boaters are mindful of stiffer boating laws enacted several years ago, Kelly said.

“The people are a lot more aware of the consequences of getting caught under the influence.”

Starting in 1997, boaters faced the same blood alcohol content standard as drivers. That level also has been lowered from .10 to .08. State boating safety statistics show fewer people have been hurt or killed in alcohol-related accidents since then.

But officials aren’t ready to link stiffer rules with fewer boating deaths.

“It’s too soon to tell,” said Ann Van Buren, spokeswoman for the Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation.

In the only alcohol-related fatality on Lake Coeur d’Alene this summer, a 36-year-old Kellogg woman was killed in July, after a personal watercraft hit a boat off Tubbs Hill. The sheriff’s office continues to investigate the incident.

Street said fewer patrols also accounted for fewer arrests this year. Last summer, 10 seasonal deputies monitored the lake. This season, two seasonal deputies left the marine force mid-summer to attend police academy.

For the first year, the Coeur d’Alene Tribe patrolled the southern end of the lake, around Harrison and up into the Coeur d’Alene River. Tribal presence was limited somewhat by the fact that the tribe had only one boat.

Next year, the tribe plans to put one or two more boats on the water, staffed with two full-time and some part-time deputies, tribal council member Chuck Matheson told a joint meeting of a county waterways committee and the tribe’s new lake management committee.

Most of this year’s arrests occurred on the lake’s north end, according to Street.

That end of the lake holds most of the boat traffic, along with a number of popular watering holes. Deputies also sniff out drunken boaters after they drive into log booms near Coeur d’Alene.

Boating under the influence, a misdemeanor, carries a maximum penalty of $1,000 or jail for up to six months. But serious jail time is rare, Street said.

And unlike drunken drivers, boaters usually can continue driving their boats following an arrest.

“Because you don’t need a license to drive a boat, there’s no license suspension,” Street said. “The courts can give you a suspension from operating your boat. That’s not very common, though. I haven’t seen one of those.”