The Santa Ana Police Department holds a DUI checkpoint tonight that kicks off a couple weeks of special traffic enforcement operations by various Orange County law enforcement agencies.
Aimed at taking drunken and/or unlicensed drivers off the roads, the checkpoint runs from 8:30 p.m. to 2 a.m. in the 2100 block of North Main Street, according to a Santa Ana Police Department advisory.
Here are other recently announced operations:
- Newport Beach Police Department conducts specialized motorcycle safety enforcement operations Friday through May 26 (the Saturday before Memorial Day), with extra officers patrolling areas frequented by motorcyclists and where recent traffic collisions have occurred involving them.
- The Anaheim Police Department holds its own motorcycle safety patrols on Saturday.
- The Orange County Sheriff’s Department holds bike and pedestrian safety enforcement operations in Stanton on Saturday, with specially assigned deputies looking for violations made by drivers, bike riders and pedestrians “that can lead to life-changing injuries.”
- Anaheim and Buena Park’s police departments join the national Click It or Ticket seat belt campaign Monday through June 3, which is a period that includes Memorial Day, the beginning of a busy travel season and the unofficial start of summer. Specially assigned officers will be on the lookout for vehicle occupants in violation of seat-belt laws, including children who are not properly secured in child safety seats.
- Over Memorial Day weekend, Buena Park cops will conduct saturation patrols, which has some officers specifically assigned to seeking drunken and/or drugged drivers by focusing on streets known for DUI stops, arrests, crashes and deaths. A DUI checkpoint will also be held over that weekend, although BPPD has not yet released an exact date and time.
- Also on May 26-27, BPPD joins law enforcement agencies across the state in motorcycle safety operations. Officers will be assigned to specifically seek motorcyclists operating unsafely as well as drivers of vehicles with more than two wheels posing dangers to riders.
Other traffic-related operations are likely to be scheduled, if not announced, in the days leading up to Memorial Day. Funding for each one comes from separate California Office of Traffic Safety grants, 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.