Galveston Arrests over Mardi Gras Weekend
Galveston Arrests over Mardi Gras Weekend
Hello everybody and happy Valentine’s Day 2023. Those of you that live here in the county know that it’s Mardi Gras. Last weekend was the first weekend, next weekend will be the second weekend, and then, of course, Fat Tuesday. So in keeping with some videos I’ve done recently on holiday weekends, I reviewed the arrests over the first weekend of Mardi Gras. It seems like it was a pretty active weekend for law enforcement. I looked at Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, like I usually do, and for the total, we had 183 arrests. Seems like a really big number to me.
Galveston County Mardi Gras Arrests
Out of that information, I looked for DWI, because alcohol is consumed heartily during Mardi Gras. I’ll break down each day. Friday, we had 47 arrests. Saturday was the biggest day with 71 arrests. Then Sunday 65 arrests. Friday, we had 8 DWI arrests. Saturday, we had 11 DWI arrests. Sunday, we had 17 DWI arrests. In total, we had 36 DWI arrests from Friday to Sunday. Which again, seems like another big number to me. 36 DWIs over the three days, and 183 Total arrests, means that there was obviously a lot of other activity going on as well.
I’ll kind of go through some of it. All I can see is the name of someone who was arrested, what time they were arrested, and sometimes the location where they were arrested. Nothing stood out about Friday. There were 8 DWI arrests but nothing jumped off the page at me. There were a decent number of what they call municipal holds, which is generally GPD will arrest someone on something simple, it could be assault, could be public intoxication or something that’s a Class C. Their conduct led to their arrests, but it doesn’t necessarily lead to an actual criminal charge.
On Saturday there was a DWI arrest that caught my attention a little bit. The person was arrested for a DWI and then also arrested for a prohibited substance in a correctional facility. In prior cases that I’ve had, that usually means someone was arrested and tried to bring a substance into jail with them. I don’t know if that’s what happened to this person. That’s what it looks like because the original arrest was for driving while intoxicated, but then at the jail, another charge was added and I can see that was at the jail by the address where the person was booked.
There was another one that stood out on Sunday, which was the largest day for DWI arrests. However, you have to remember that Sunday starts at midnight. So we had a whole bunch of arrests two minutes after midnight, 15 minutes after midnight, 41 minutes after midnight, 1:51 a.m., 2:28 a.m. One of those arrests also led to an unlawful carrying of a weapon.
Sometimes that is a license holder, who was deemed to be intoxicated while driving and they have a concealed carry permit or license to carry, and then charged with unlawful carrying of a weapon because they were carrying a weapon while they were intoxicated. I don’t know if that’s the case here but it does happen.
Anyway, then we go to 4:00 a.m. Another one at 8:03 a.m., and 10:37 a.m., and then it only looks like there were a few arrests on Sunday evening. So Sunday starts at midnight. Most of those were people that have been out from earlier in the evening, maybe at Mardi Gras.
Municipal Holding
There was a whole slew of people on Saturday night that was arrested on a market street near 24th down there in the Mardi Gras area. 7 people were put in municipal holding by GPD. Again, it was a municipal hold, which means they were ticketed, but they were arrested. That could have been anything from fighting to public intoxication but due to the location of the arrest, I can see that it was downtown where most of the festivities were.
There was one other interesting arrest and it was a DWI and then an added charge of possession of marijuana, four ounces to five pounds. This just stood out because you don’t see a whole lot of marijuana arrests anymore. Because the charge is four ounces to five pounds, I don’t know if we’re closer to four ounces or five pounds. That piled on that person’s list of problems. Likely they were stopped for DWI, and somehow that led to the discovery of marijuana inside the car. Typically, it’s because an officer says he could smell it and then uses that as justification to search the car. That was a little bit after midnight on Friday, and that was here on the island. I don’t know if it was closer to four ounces or closer to five pounds, but we don’t see a whole lot of marijuana cases anymore.
Other than intoxication matters. There were a couple of municipal holds that I could tell were public toxication because the arresting officer listed them as such. There was one and this one’s kind of interesting, but it’s a person who was arrested on the charge of public intoxication with three prior convictions, which just raises the punishment level. I’m guessing that person is somehow known to law enforcement, to have been arrested three separate times for public intoxication. We don’t see that a whole lot.
It was overall what I consider to be a big law enforcement weekend, which means law enforcement was out in large numbers here in Galveston. I did not have time before I came on this Facebook Live to go back and look, but if my recollection is correct, this was much bigger than the biker rally was. 183 Total arrests from Friday to Sunday, a total of 36 DWIs with Saturday night, and Sunday morning being the big concentration of DWI stops and arrests. I’ll keep a lookout this weekend, see what the numbers are, and try to get with y’all next week and tell you what I found. I hope you have a good week and again, Happy Valentine’s Day.
Contact Mark Diaz & Associates For Help With Galveston Criminal Charges
Mark Diaz and his team specialize in criminal defense in Galveston County and the surrounding area. If you have been charged with DWI, drug possession, assault, or any other crime, call us at (409) 515-6170.
