Law change will send second, third DWI offenses to Municipal Court

People who get caught driving under the influence will soon have a new process to go through. By mid-February the Gallup Municipal Court hopes to have a new probation officer on staff to manage DWI cases, in part to stem a tide of dismissals in Magistrate Court.

“There is a dismissal rate of about 75% taking place right now for DWIs in the Magistrate Court level. They don’t have the capacity to handle them,” Municipal Court Judge Janell Griego told the city council when she asked for the new probation officer position in December.

Griego explained how having DWIs go through Municipal Court would speed up the...

A McKinley County Sheriff’s Deputy had an allergic reaction to the drugs he found in a woman’s car.

Deputy Shane Bennett was traveling southbound on US Highway 491 and approaching the intersection of US Highway 491 and Jefferson Avenue in Gallup on Jan. 13  when he noticed a small silver Kia passenger car almost side swipe a semi truck.

The car was swerving all over the road. The driver, who was later identified as Starrissa Yazzie, approached the intersection and turned onto Jefferson Avenue. That’s when Bennett turned on his siren and told Yazzie, 40, from Fort Defiance, Ariz., to pull over.

Yazie pulled into the American Heritage Plaza parking lot at 840 U.S. Hwy. 491...

After calling the police about a man who she claimed was harassing her, a woman named Cynthia Happy ended up being the one arrested.

On Jan. 13, around 7:30 pm, McKinley County Sheriff’s Deputy Nocona Clark was dispatched to the Fort Wingate trailer park to speak to Happy, 32. When he met Happy at the Running Bear store at the front of the trailer park, she told the deputy that a man had been chasing her with a hammer and a machete.

According to the report, Happy said that she was staying with a friend, and they were working on the bathroom together when a man came in and asked her where his phone was.

Happy said the man ended up threatening her with the hammer and machete, and he...

The most important thing newly retired Chief Franklin Boyd learned in his nearly 25 years with the Gallup Police Department isn’t something you can teach in a classroom: Compassion.

Boyd, who had been chief since April 19, 2019, joined the department in 1998 after attending the police academy in Gallup. He’d grown up and gone to school in Fort Defiance, Ariz., and spent seven years in the U.S. Marine Corps before that.

He started out on patrol and worked his way up from there. But those early experiences on the street taught him that the world isn’t black and white, even if your car is.

“When I was a very young officer, knowing the basics in terms of dealing with the public...