UPDATE, DEC. 12, 9:24 A.M.: Lt. Ben Stauffer of the Garden Grove Police Department did get back to Weekly Thursday evening about the weather vs. tonight's scheduled DUI checkpoint: “It will go if the weatherman is wrong. If the weatherman is right, it will turn into a saturation patrol in vehicles throughout the city.”
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ORIGINAL POST, DEC. 12, 7:03 A.M.: The rain that pounded Orange County today won't stop DUI checkpoints from being conducted tonight in Tustin, Garden Grove and Newport Beach and tomorrow night in Anaheim–at least not as of this writing.
“It is still a go, pending inclement weather,” said Jennifer Manzella, the Newport Beach Police Department spokeswoman, of a checkpoint scheduled to run from 8 tonight through 2 a.m. Saturday somewhere within the city limits.
“If needed, we will change to a saturation patrol,” said Manzella, referring to the operations that put extra patrol officers on streets known for drunken driving citations, crashes and fatalities.
Lt. Bob Wright said as of Thursday afternoon the Tustin Police Department's Traffic Unit was still planning to hold its checkpoint at an undisclosed spot in the city from 8 tonight through 3 a.m. Saturday.
Word did not come back at press time from the Garden Grove Police Department, which has a checkpoint planned from 9 tonight through 3 a.m. Saturday somewhere in the city.
The Anaheim Police Department Traffic Detail should have no weather issues when it comes to its checkpoint at Harbor Boulevard and La Palma Avenue from 7 p.m. Saturday through 3 a.m. Sunday. Saturday's forecast calls for partly cloudy skies and only a 10 percent chance of rain.
Meanwhile, Anaheim tonight kicks off a December of saturation patrols through Sunday as well as Dec. 16, 18-20, 23, 27, 30-31–all between 7 p.m. and 3 a.m., Lt. Bob Dunn previously announced.
This post will be updated if any last-minute changes are announced about these weekend operations, which are funded by California Office for Traffic Safety grants to the local departments, through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
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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.