A rare Thursday DUI/drivers license checkpoint will be held tonight.
Where?
Newport Beach.
Where in Newport Beach?
Beats me.
The NBPD Traffic Unit is not disclosing the location within the city limits of the operation that runs from 8 p.m. through 2 a.m. Friday.
But a reason for the checkpoint is being revealed, as police Sgt. Rachel Johnson explains that three people have died and 157 people have been injured in 115 DUI crashes in the past three years in Newport Beach.
Johnson’s department advises those visiting the town’s legendary watering holes use Uber, Lyft, Curb or the California Office of Traffic Safety’s DDVIP apps to get rides home. Otherwise, those caught driving legally drunk or drugged face the risk of arrest, jail time, fines, fees, DUI classes, other expenses and embarrassment when friends and family find out.
Checkpoint funding comes from 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.