During specified times, including around New Year’s Eve, a county prosecutor and judge will be available throughout the night at two locations — the East County Annex in New Caney, and at the county jail in Conroe — in order to obtain a search warrant for blood samples from arrested individuals who are arrested and refuse a breathalyser test or voluntary blood draw .

Law enforcement arrested 15 people suspected of driving drunk in 2012, from 10 p.m. New Year’s Eve until 5 a.m. New Year’s Day.

In 2011, the no refusal program resulted in 16 DWI arrests on New Year’s Eve, while 29 arrests were recorded during New Year’s Eve 2010, Diepraam said.

“You can never rest when it comes to traffic safety on our county roadways, or on the waterways of Lake Conroe,” Diepraam said. “Fatalities are down, and it’s that combination of judges, prosecutors and law enforcement that have made roads safer in Montgomery County on New Year’s Eve.”

Officials with the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Department and the Texas Department of Public Safety intend to nearly double the amount of New Year’s Eve patrol thanks in part to a $25,000 TxDOT grant appropriating funds for extra troopers and deputies “whose sole purpose is to be on the lookout for (drunk) drivers,” said Lt. Brady Fitzgerald, public information officer with the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office.

The Texas Department of Public Safety will have nearly every available trooper that can work supplementing additional patrols on New Year’s Eve and assisting all agencies in Montgomery County, said Sgt. John Sampa of the TX-DPS media communications office.

County prosectors and law enforment want to leave little to the imagination on New Year’s Eve as to what will happen if a driver is caught driving impaired — whether by drugs or alcohol — in Montgomery County.

“We will have zero tolerance for drunk drivers in Montgomery County,” Fitzgerald said. “If they are caught, they will be put in jail.”