PALMER — If courthouse records are any indication, Mat-Su Valley residents kicked off the new year in the traditional way — with booze.

Each year at the courthouse, criminal case numbers reset. From now until the end of the year each case will be assigned a number in sequence, running from one to — at least in the case of 2008 — more than 3,600.

This year, cases one through five were alcohol-related. First out of the gate was Daryl T.R. Clements. Alaska State Troopers talked to him at just minutes into the New Year after the car he was riding in was stopped for a moving violation. They found out he was out on bail for a DUI offense. The court had ordered that he not drink, but troopers allege he had.

Cases two, three and five were all drunken-driving related.

No. 2 belongs to Ramon Gutierrez, 49, of Anchorage, who troopers stopped at 3:41 a.m. Thursday at Mile 68.5 Parks Highway, according to a trooper press statement. Gutierrez failed sobriety tests and picked up another charge for having been intoxicated while possessing a firearm.

Then came Cory Sandiford, 30, the third person to have charges filed against him in the year. Palmer police picked him up on New Year’s Day. They say he was driving while intoxicated and had a revoked license.

The fifth court case of the year bears the name of Kimbra L. Monroe, 37, of Wasilla, who Alaska State Troopers picked up on the Parks Highway near Vine Road at midnight. She was jailed for DUI and also for child endangerment since she had 10-year-old passenger at the time.

The most dramatic of the first five cases was No. 4. Palmer police were informed at 1:43 a.m. that Rudy Gene Lytle, 27, of Palmer, was causing a ruckus at Klondike Mike’s.

According to an affidavit Palmer police Officer Andy Deveaux filed in the case, an employee at the bar told officers Lytle had, “Head-butted a Budweiser sign, punched out the plexiglass window of an interior door and smashed a coffee cup on the bar, cutting his right hand.”

The bar manager tried to eject Lytle, Deveaux says in the report, but was not successful.

Officers had more success, finally managing to get Lytle outside, according to Deveaux. Outside, officers ordered Lytle to leave the property, but he instead challenged them to a fight. Some of Lytle’s friends tried to pitch in to help, but Lytle was having none of it.

“Several times Lytle pushed past the people attempting to get him to leave and charged at me, but was grabbed and physically restrained by the bar patrons,” Deveaux wrote.

Sgt. Kelly Turney with the Palmer Police Department said that at some point Deveaux and the other officer with him called for backup.

He said Lytle isn’t an unknown to local police. According to court records, in 2007 he was charged with threatening a peace officer with a weapon. There was also a second officer safety issue to worry about, Turney said. Lytle’s friends were trying to help Deveaux out, but that didn’t mean the situation couldn’t have changed.

“In any case where you have numerous people there the tides can change, where folks are being helpful to you and then all of a sudden they’re not helping you,” Turney said.

Eventually, police arrested Lytle, charging him with disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and trespassing. He was jailed at the Mat-Su Pre-Trial Facility. Jail records show he’s since bailed out.