Last month, the Minnesota Department of Public Safety announced its 2026 DWI Enforcement All-Stars.
Fifty-seven officers made the list. Together, they made 4,415 DWI arrests in 2025, accounting for 16.5 percent of all DWI arrests statewide. The State also named Bill Lemons of the Minnesota County Attorneys Association its DWI Prosecutor Enforcement All-Star.
We have written about Minnesota’s DWI All-Star program before, going back more than a decade.
Our concern remains the same:
The award measures quantity. It does not measure the quality of the police work behind those arrests.
And this year, we do not have to speculate about the standard.
The State’s own 2026 nomination form says:
“The All Stars will be selected based on the number of DWI arrests for 2025.”
Agency and city size may also be considered so officers from smaller departments have an opportunity to be recognized.
Look at what the nomination form asks for: the officer’s DWI arrest total, agency, years in law enforcement and basic identifying information.
It does not ask how many of those arrests resulted in convictions.
It does not ask how many cases were dismissed.
It does not ask whether evidence was suppressed.
It does not ask whether judges found problems with probable cause.
It does not ask whether field sobriety tests were administered correctly.
It does not ask whether the officer accurately reported what happened.
It does not ask whether a court criticized the officer’s investigation or testimony.
It counts arrests.
That raises a pretty simple question:
Should the number of people an officer arrests be the measure of excellent police work?
We Have Seen an “All-Star” Arrest Fall Apart in Court
We know why the distinction matters because we have litigated cases involving DWI All-Stars.
Last year, we wrote on Facebook about Inver Grove Heights Officer Jacob Weldon, who had twice received DWI All-Star recognition.
Then we represented one of the people he arrested.
When a Dakota County judge examined that particular arrest, rather than simply counting it, the picture looked very different.
The court found there was “very little (if any) evidence” of impairment.
The judge found that Weldon “could not delineate between having consumed alcohol and being impaired by it.”
And the court found that the manner in which he administered the field sobriety tests left them with “little factual value.”
The judge found no probable cause for the arrest and rescinded our client’s license revocation.
We called the police work in that case incompetent. But put our opinion aside.
The court’s findings speak for themselves.
And they expose the problem with an award based principally on arrest numbers:
DPS counted the arrest. The judge examined the quality of the arrest.
Those are two very different things.
For purposes of an enforcement statistic, an arrest adds one more number to the total.
For the person arrested, it may mean handcuffs, jail, loss of a driver’s license, thousands of dollars in expense and a criminal prosecution.
That is why quality matters.
And Then There Is Bill Lemons
This year’s list contains another name we know well.
Bill Lemons, the Traffic Safety Resource Prosecutor for the Minnesota County Attorneys Association, was selected as the DWI Prosecutor Enforcement All-Star. DPS says he was recognized for his work securing DWI convictions.
Our history with Lemons goes back years, including Minnesota’s long running litigation over the DataMaster DMT source code.
The source code is the computer software underlying Minnesota’s breath testing instrument. When the government relies on a machine to generate scientific evidence used to prosecute someone, defense lawyers may have very good reasons to ask how that machine works.
We did.
And we fought in court for access to the source code.
What later emerged through government data requests was remarkable.
In May 2019, Intoximeters, the private company involved in Minnesota’s breath testing program, contacted the BCA about one of our source code cases and asked BCA personnel and Bill Lemons to join a conference call about the litigation.
Days later, internal BCA emails described a meeting organized by Lemons to help prosecutors “understand and navigate” the source code issues.
The most striking language came from the BCA itself.
An internal email stated that Lemons, “at the request of Intoximeters,” was preparing a package of source code materials that would be made available to prosecutors.
Meeting notes then contemplated prosecutors sending source code orders, transcripts and affidavits to Lemons for distribution, the BCA providing additional materials to him, and Intoximeters supplying materials to Lemons for distribution as well.
Think about that structure.
Criminal defendants were going to court asking for access to information about the machine the government was using to prosecute them.
At the same time, the government’s traffic safety prosecutor, the BCA, and the private company involved with that technology were coordinating their response to those requests.
We thought that deserved scrutiny then.
We still do.
This year, Minnesota named Bill Lemons its DWI Prosecutor Enforcement All-Star.
What Does an Arrest Total Actually Tell Us?
None of this means that every officer on the All-Star list does poor work.
Quite the opposite. We have dealt with many excellent police officers over the years.
We have cross examined officers who candidly admitted when they made a mistake. We have seen officers write accurate reports even when the facts hurt the prosecution. We have watched officers administer tests carefully, treat people respectfully and recognize when the evidence simply did not justify an arrest.
That is professionalism.
Some of the officers on this year’s list may do exactly that.
But this award cannot tell us that, because it does not measure it.
It measures arrests.
Imagine instead an All-Star program that asked:
- Did the officer follow the Constitution?
- Did the officer follow his or her training?
- Were the reports accurate?
- Were field sobriety tests properly administered?
- Were chemical tests properly obtained and administered?
- Did the officer exercise good judgment?
- Did the officer testify candidly, even when the truth hurt the State’s case?
- How often did courts find the officer’s work reliable?
- How often did those arrests withstand meaningful judicial scrutiny?
Those things are harder to put on a scoreboard.
But when the government is taking away someone’s liberty, they matter a great deal more than a raw arrest total.
We Get More of What We Reward
Awards create incentives.
If the principal measure of DWI enforcement excellence is how many arrests an officer makes, the message is not difficult to understand:
Make more arrests.
We would rather see Minnesota celebrate something harder to count.
Good arrests.
Careful investigations.
Accurate reports.
Properly administered tests.
Honest testimony.
Sound judgment.
Constitutional policing.
Those officers exist. We see them in court.
They are the real All-Stars.
Quantity is easy to measure.
Quality is harder.
But when the government is taking away someone’s liberty, quality is the measure that ought to matter most.
