{"id":64243,"date":"2025-11-25T11:33:29","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T11:33:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/64243\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T11:33:29","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T11:33:29","slug":"el-paso-county-sheriffs-office-to-increase-patrols-during-thanksgiving-week-with-focus-on-red-sands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/64243\/","title":{"rendered":"El Paso County Sheriff\u2019s Office to increase patrols during Thanksgiving week with focus on Red Sands"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>EL PASO, Texas (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ktsm.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">KTSM<\/a>) \u2014 The El Paso County Sheriff\u2019s Office (EPCSO) will begin increasing patrols across the County on Wednesday, Nov. 26, ahead of Thanksgiving festivities. The operations will run through Sunday of next week.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor Thanksgiving weekend, as always, we have families coming into town. Everybody\u2019s out there, celebrating, but we want to remind the community, please be responsible. We have an operation going on next week. We\u2019ll have increased patrols in the streets,\u201d El Paso County Sheriff Oscar Ugarte said.<\/p>\n<p>Ugarte said Thanksgiving festivities usually commence Wednesday night, which has been infamously coined as \u201cBlackout Wednesday\u201d by younger people, one of the days of the year with the <a href=\"https:\/\/alcohol.org\/statistics-information\/holiday-binge-drinking\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/alcohol.org\/statistics-information\/holiday-binge-drinking\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">highest binge drinking rates.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Uguarte said EPCSO will also be placing an emphasis on patrolling the dunes of Red Sands on the Friday after Thanksgiving, where he said El Pasoans gather in large crowds for what is commonly referred to as the \u201cTurkey Trail Run.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEvery major holiday, here in El Paso, our community tends to go to Red Sands and have fun. So there\u2019s a large concentration of people in the Red Sands areas. Unfortunately, they mix 4-by-4 vehicles with alcohol. When we have that mixed mixture, then there tends to be more accidents. There\u2019s ATVs traveling in all directions. When there\u2019s a dune, you do not know what\u2019s on the other side of the dune, whether it is pedestrians or if there\u2019s another ATV. So we remind the community, please be extra cautious,\u201d Ugarte said. <\/p>\n<p>Ugarte said his office will have deputies patrolling in four-wheel-drive trucks and ATVs from Friday morning, the day after Thanksgiving, through early Saturday morning.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Earlier this year, during the 4th of July weekend, the Sheriff\u2019s Office carried out a similar operation but at a much larger scale, at Red Sands and throughout the County, to crack down on drunk driving.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" height=\"720\" width=\"1280\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/red-sands-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2313527\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" height=\"720\" width=\"1280\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/red-sands.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2313525\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ktsm.com\/news\/el-paso-county-sheriffs-office-cracks-down-on-dwi-during-july-fourth-holiday\/?ipid=promo-link-block1\" class=\"promo-link__link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><br \/>\n\t\tEl Paso County Sheriff\u2019s Office cracks down on DWI during July Fourth holiday\t<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe operations were successful. We had no major accidents, no shootings, no injuries. And we plan to do a similar operation for this Thanksgiving weekend,\u201d Ugarte said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>During that operation, EPCSO deployed over 100 Sheriff deputies to patrol in and around the Red Sands.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Ugarte said his office conducted over 384 traffic stops and 53 arrests that weekend. He said 29 of those arrests were related to DWI crimes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou will see extra Sheriff\u2019s Office deputies patrolling our community, and it\u2019s not to take people to jail. That\u2019s not the focus. The focus is we want community members to make it back home safely, enjoy the holiday weekend, but be responsible,\u201d Ugarte said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) \u2014 The El Paso County Sheriff\u2019s Office (EPCSO) will begin increasing patrols across the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64244,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[138,140,139],"class_list":["post-64243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-el-paso","tag-el-paso","tag-el-paso-headlines","tag-el-paso-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64243\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}