If you thought Orange County law enforcement would be easing up on anti-DUI operations after going all out last weekend due to St. Patrick’s Day, think again.
Tonight there are checkpoints in Irvine and Santa Ana and special patrols aimed at taking drunk/drugged drivers off San Clemente roads.
The Orange County Sheriff’s Department, which is contracted for police services in San Clemente, runs the so-called “saturation patrols” from 6 p.m. through 2 a.m. Saturday.
Deputies from the DUI Enforcement Team join colleagues on regular patrol beats in looking for motorists displaying signs of driving under the influence.
The Irvine Police Department DUI checkpoint is scheduled to run from 8 p.m. through 2 a.m. Saturday in the area of MacArthur Boulevard and Main Street.
Santa Ana Police’s checkpoint is due up from 9:30 p.m. through 2:30 a.m. in the area of 2100 S. Raitt St.
Besides looking for signs of driving under the influence, officers will be checking for proper licensing.
Funding for the three agencies’ DUI operations come from separate 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.