Nearly every, if not all, 39 or whatever number it is Orange County law enforcement agencies are participating in the holiday season Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over campaign that began Dec. 15 and continues through Jan. 1.
Held in partnership with the California Office of Traffic Safety (OTS) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the anti-DUI enforcement includes extra patrols being poured onto local streets and highways to combat drunken or drugged drivers.
It also includes DUI checkpoints, including those tonight in Newport Beach and Santa Ana.
The Newport Beach Police Department has not yet announced the details for its operation, but the Santa Ana Police Department checkpoint will be up tonight from 9:30 p.m. through 2:30 a.m. in the area of 500 West First Street.
Especially this time of year, law enforcement, OTS and NHTSA encourage hearty partiers to use taxis, sober friends or ride-sharing services instead of climbing behind the wheel.
Funding for checkpoints and sobriety patrols come from OTS grants, through the NHTSA.
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.