Officers from the Burleigh County Sheriff's Department and officials from North Dakota Game and Fish and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers made eight criminal arrests, issued 13 citations and 15 warnings and talked to more than 150 people during a special enforcement session at the "Desert."

Burleigh County Sheriff's Lt. Kelly Leben said the sheriff's department joined with the other organizations for the special enforcement after noticing an increase in problems at the Desert, a beach along the Missouri River south of Bismarck also known as Kimball Bottoms.

"We've started seeing an increase of criminal activity down there," Leben said, mentioning incidents involving juvenile drinking, drugs, fights, assaults, thefts and ATV complaints.

The special enforcement Saturday lasted from 1 to 9 p.m. and involved eight sheriff's deputies, three people from Game and Fish and one person from the corps, Leben said.

Officers arrested three people for driving under suspension, three people for minor in consumption, one person for possession of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia and one person on a Bismarck Police Department warrant, Leben said. He said officers also issued one citation for no spotter while tubing, two for ATV helmet violation, two for open container, five for driver not belted and three for driving under suspension.

Four warnings were issued for failure to signal, two for no driver's license, four for registration violatiuons, two for littering and three for failure to provide proof of insurance, Leben said.

Leben said officers also spoke to 41 groups of people, made up of approximately 160 people, about laws pertaining to the use of ATVs and other North Dakota laws during the eight-hour enforcement.

"Our whole goal was enforcement and education," he said.

Leben said people are not allowed to drive ATVs in the campground area.

People who drive ATVs must be licensed drivers, and juvenile drivers older than 12 who do not have a drivers license must have an off-highway vehicle safety certificate, he said.

Also, all vehicles must have liability insurance.

"We're not trying to prevent people from having fun," Leben said. "We're trying to just prevent the criminal activity that some people are bringing in."

The sheriff's department does such special enforcement operations at the Desert on occasion, but Saturday's was the first one where the department brought in other agencies to assist.

"This was the biggest one we've done to date," Leben said.

(Reach reporter Jenny Michael at 250-8225 or jenny.michael@;bismarcktribune.com.)