UPDATE, MARCH 24, 3:20 P.M.: The Santa Ana Police Department just announced it will have a DUI/drivers license checkpoint from 9:30 tonight through 2:30 a.m. Saturday in the area of 800 W. First St., Santa Ana.
ORIGINAL POST, MARCH 24, 5:07 A.M.: Deputies from the Orange County Sheriff’s DUI Enforcement Team will out starting tonight “to stop and arrest alcohol and drug-impaired drivers in the department’s ongoing traffic safety campaign,” according to the agency.
The two cities blanketed by these so-called “DUI saturation patrols” from 7 tonight through 3 a.m. Saturday are Dana Point and San Clemente. That’s where streets known for DUI arrests, collisions and fatalities will get extra attention by specially assigned deputies.
According to the OCSD, DUI checkpoints and saturation patrols have “proven to lower the number of people killed and injured in alcohol- or drug-impaired crashes.”
Funding for the operation comes from a California Office of Traffic Safety grant, through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.