By Jo McMullen / KVSC reporter

Stearns County Sheriff Steve Soyka is sharing information about the number of DWI arrests in the county in 2021.

In a weekly newsletter the sheriff reported Stearns County ranked 8th in the state with the number of DWI arrests last year as 670. Of those arrests, sheriff’s deputies made about 35% of them throughout the county.

There were 23,493 DWI arrests state-wide with Hennepin County leading all other counties with 4,088.

Sokya adds there were 722 arrests in 2020, this is a 9% decrease DWI cases in 2021.

Aside from DWI arrests, last year was one of the deadliest in terms of fatalities with about 500 people dying due to crashes across the state, with about 200 of those crashes due to impaired driving.