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Sheriff's marine deputy sniffs out a record number of drunken boaters photo by Jim Craven Jackson County Sheriff's Marine Deputy Joe Puckett set a record for the state of Oregon in 1999, arresting 62 people for operating watercraft while under the influence of intoxicants. By MARK FREEMAN Joe Puckett is a human Breathalyzer, and Jackson County's drunken boaters best beware. Puckett, a Jackson County marine deputy, uses all his senses to sniff out the intoxicated people illegally operating boats on Southern Oregon's waterways. "I talk to people, watch their actions," Puckett says. "But mainly, I look at people's eyes. Their eyes will tell you a lot." Puckett arrested 62 pairs of those eyes for boating under the influence of intoxicants during the 1999 summer boating season, earning the 34-year-old Puckett "Marine Deputy of the Year" honors from the Oregon State Marine Board. Puckett's arrest numbers were a state record and eclipsed the totals for all other counties and represented about one-fifth of all the BUII arrests in Oregon last year. "He's made it a mission," says Cole Hughes, who helps run the Marine Board's enforcement program that includes some 200 marine deputies patroling in Oregon each summer. "Joe is extremely observant, and he is really good at recognizing those intoxicated boaters." With Memorial Day weekend the traditional start of the summer boating season, this message is also a warning to rafters, water-skiers, fishermen and others that mixing booze and boats is unsafe and could lead to a citation. You might catch the Human Breathalyzer's eye. And he has a portable blood-alcohol testing machine as well. Boating under the influence of intoxicants is a Class A misdemeanor under Oregon law, punishable by up to a year in jail and a $5,000 fine, but most convictions carry no jail time and rarely more than a few hundred dollars in fines. While it is not illegal to drink or have open alcoholic beverages while boating, the law bans operating any watercraft while intoxicated and that covers everything from driving a speed boat to helping paddle a small raft or floating down-river in an inner tube. Like in motor-vehicle cases, boaters are assumed to be intoxicated if their blood-alcohol level is .08 percent or higher. But reaching that level is not required for a conviction. Puckett has made BUII enforcement a priority because drunken boaters are safety liabilities. Jackson County marine deputies logged 84 drunken boating arrests in 1999 through September. The next highest county was Marion County with 45. Deschutes County, for instance, had one and Multnomah County had 10. Puckett says the statistics don't mean that Jackson County has more boozing boaters than the rest of the state. "It just means we do a lot of enforcement in that area," Puckett says. Stepped-up enforcement means Puckett adjusts his work days and hours each summer to target the evenings and weekends when boaters are more apt to be drinking. He works more evenings than most other marine deputies across Oregon, patrolling lakes in a powerboat or watching rafters and kayakers head into boat ramps along the upper Rogue River. Most of Puckett's arrests were on the lakes last summer, only because he patrols lakes more than rivers, he says. "But there's more on the rivers," he says. About a third of Puckett's arrests last summer were for boating under the influence of marijuana or other illegal drugs. That's a rarity, Hughes says, because it's tougher to find the pot-smoking boaters than the drunk ones. "They're not so cut and dried," Hughes says. "You have to be creative." Obituaries | Sports | Business | Classifieds | Tempo | Prime Times | So Oregon Sites | Outdoor Journal | Subscribe | Contact | Movies | Advertise | Real Estate Showcase | Archive | Editorials | Letters to the editor | Religion | Wake-up Call | NIE | Cyber Chef | Job Network | So Oregon Weather | WSJ Northwest | Forums | AP Wire | AP Money | F.A.Q. | Awards Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. The Community Newspaper Subsidiary of Dow Jones & Co, Inc Copyright �The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA