Alcohol, drugs, domestic violence lead arrests

It's become something of a New Year's tradition here at the Frontiersman. Not as fun as other New Year's traditions, but certainly fitting with the stock-taking nature of the holiday.

Each year we take a look in online court databases to see which were the first five cases of the year.

It's a simple thing to check. Case numbers are assigned sequentially and the counter ticks all year until midnight on Dec. 31.

Last year, the counter reached 3,517 before it reset. The year before that it was 3,493.

Maybe police agencies stepped up their game a notch this year. Maybe that 24-case hike was a coincidence. Maybe we should just chalk it up as another indicator of our community's steady population growth.

It's hard to draw any kind of conclusions though from such unscientific assessments of things as complicated as the criminal justice system.

But, as we've said before, we actually find some hope in this statistic, given that the Valley's population is 89,000 or so, according to the 2010 U.S. Census. Some quick math reveals that even if all of those cases were filed against different people - which we're certain isn't the case - just less than 4 percent of our population wound up on the wrong side of the law this year.

As we prefer the glass-is-half-full view, we prefer to say that at least 96 percent of us made it through the year without any legal trouble more dramatic or life-changing than a traffic ticket.

As for those first five cases, just as last year, the charges listed are pretty ho-hum, run-of-the-mill offenses.

First up was a drug possession case, then a drunk at a business licensed to sell alcohol, followed by a drunken driving arrest, an assault case and a second drunken driving case. That first drunken driver was likely a repeat offender, given that his license was suspended when he was arrested this time. He also refused a breath test. The drunk in a bar case involved a man getting tossed out for being unruly. He also was charged with disorderly conduct.

Last year, we noted that describing these cases as unremarkable admits a pretty shameful truth about our community: that drunken driving, domestic abuse and drug possession are routine enough that we've come to ignore them.

Last year we hoped that would change. We still hope for this, even if it is getting harder to say so with a straight face.