UPDATE, JUNE 23, 8:15 A.M.: As a car approached last night's DUI checkpoint at Bristol Street and Randolph Avenue in Costa Mesa, a beer can flew out of a passenger window.
The driver was not only cited for allowing an open container in the vehicle, but a passenger was cited and also arrested for having an outstanding DUI warrant.
The final stats from Wednesday night's operation follow after the jump . . .
]
1,381 vehicles
through the checkpoint.
713
vehicles screened.
5 drivers
given field sobriety tests.
1 DUI
suspect arrested.
2 warrants
served.
30
driver license investigations.
18
citations issued.
10 vehicles
towed.
ORIGINAL POST, JUNE 22, 12:12 P.M.: As my colleague Chasen pointed out, the Costa Mesa Police Department no longer discloses the location of DUI checkpoints, hoping to snare boozehounds who might be coherent enough to steer around previously announced stops.
Another thing the sneaky coppers are doing–at least before the layoff notices roll in–is holding the sobriety sweeps on random nights, to go along with those held during weekends of historically heavy saucing.
Take, for instance, tonight.
Yup, the force has announced they'll be stopping drivers in search of the drunk and unlicensed somewhere in Costa Mesa from 6 tonight to midnight.
The
town's traffic division warns that summer months are the most dangerous on local roads when it comes to alcohol-involved collisions, a trend that is also played out statewide. Besides removing some of the menace, the operations are intended to enlighten everyone else about the dangers of drinking and driving.
The stop is funded by a grant from the California
Office of Traffic Safety, through the National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration. Such funds will also be used during the Fourth of July and Labor Day weekends, when Costa Mesa cops vow to participate in local and countywide enforcement efforts aimed at taking drunks off roads.
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.