El Paso Attorney’s Ad Makes MADD Mad, Draws Ire Of Police Department

An ad spotted in El Paso restaurants and bars is raising eyebrows.

The flier is for attorney Mark T. Davis and features calculations about drinking and driving, citing the odds of a person being struck by lightening or fatally slipping in the shower are greater than the odds of being killed in a DWI crash.

“This is educational,” said Davis. “Inflammatory, yes. But it’s the truth. We’ve grossly exaggerated the risk of DWI.”

Davis said his own office came up with the formula to calculate his figures by using data derived from the website of Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

“(The flier) is a slap to the face not only for MADD as an organization but to the victims that have lost loved ones,” said Virginia Gonzalez, the executive director of MADD West Texas.

She said the figures in the ad are misleading. The El Paso Police Department agrees.

“Anyone that pays attention to what happens in the community with any level of common sense is going to see right through (that ad) and see it for the garbage that it is,” said EPPD’s Chris Mears.

Mears pointed out that out of all 74 traffic deaths in El Paso last year, 44 featured alcohol as a contributing factor. He said the calculations in the ad undermine the work officers do to keep streets safe and also took issue with a line in the flier that says, “You are more likely to be killed by the arresting officer during a DWI stop or in the jail shower than during a DWI.”

Davis said he does not have statistics to back that claim up, but believes that it’s true. He added he does not fully trust statistics anyway.

“Someone could be sitting at a stop light with an open container in the middle of the console and they get rear-ended,” said Davis. “Alcohol had nothing to do with causation but MADD will exaggerate the facts.”

Mears said that’s not true. “This is someone who has no idea how we compile our data complaining about how our data is compiled. Simply because someone might have had a beer — we all know a beer is not gonna push most people above the legal limit to where we can say alcohol was a factor. It requires more than that in our investgatiuon to make that determination,” said Mears.

Davis maintains too many people are being pulled over and arrested for DWI without the proper justification or treatment. He said his flier does not include information about DWI-related injuries or other serious consequences because he did not want to overload the ad with too much information.