Sobriety checkpoints involving law enforcement agencies that cover Stanton, Anaheim, Cypress, Buena Park, La Palma, Los Alamitos, Santa Ana and Seal Beach will be held tonight and Saturday, and the locations of some operations have been released. Special patrols aimed at drunken drivers are also being held throughout the county.
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Up first with a checkpoint at 6 this evening through 3 a.m. Saturday is Stanton, the Orange County Sheriff's Department previously announced. Deputies patrol the city under a contract.
The sheriff's department, as part of the countywide “Avoid the 38” anti-DUI task force, also disclosed at that time that there will be a multi-agency checkpoint from 7 tonight through 3 a.m. Saturday involving the Cypress, La Palma, Los Alamitos and Seal Beach police departments.
The Buena Park Police Department has announced the location of its checkpoint that will be up from 7 tonight through 2 a.m. Saturday: Beach Boulevard and Stanton Avenue. Besides drunken drivers, cops there will also be looking for the unlicensed.
There are also “saturation patrols” tonight where special units patrol streets known for drunken driving arrests, collisions and fatalities. They run from 7 p.m. through 3 a.m. Saturday in Anaheim and, as part of a combined agency operation, Los Alamitos and Seal Beach.
The Anaheim Police Department comes back Saturday for a DUI checkpoint from 7 p.m. through 3 a.m. Sunday in the 1500 Block of South State College Boulevard.
“Over the course of the past three years, DUI collisions have claimed 12 lives and resulted in 418 injury crashes harming more than 650 of our friends and neighbors in Anaheim,” reads a statement from Lt. Bob Dunn, the department's spokesman. “During the same time, there were 1,649 DUI arrests in Anaheim.”
The Santa Ana Police Department holds a DUI/drivers license checkpoint from 9 p.m. Saturday through 3 a.m. Sunday near 2000 W. First St., that agency announced.
Cal State Fullerton campus police as well as the combo forces of Garden Grove, Seal Beach and Westminster run saturation patrols run from 7 p.m. Saturday through 3 a.m. Sunday.
Funding for all of these operations comes from grants from the California Office of Traffic Safety through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
“Avoid the 38” announced here …
8 Arrests in Sweep of Orange County Neighborhoods for “High Risk DUI Offenders”
… that there were at least 169 people arrested for alleged drunken driving during end-of-summer, anti-DUI operations last weekend. No DUI-related deaths were reported.
(“Avoid the 38” this afternoon updated the stats to indicate from 12:01 a.m., Friday, August 15, through 11:59 p.m., Thursday, there were at least 281 individuals arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs. That's without all agencies reporting. There were 171 DUI arrests during the same seven-day period in 2013. Data will continue to be collected through 11:59 p.m. Monday, Sept. 1.)
The earlier post also includes dates and locations of other operations through the end of summer.
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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.