Several Orange County police agencies have stepped up DUI enforcement leading up to summer bookending Labor Day weekend.
But these operations failed to remove from the road a 23-year-old Los Angeles man who is accused of ramming his four-door sedan into an unmarked police car driven by a Garden Grove Police sergeant on his way to a call Sunday night.
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The drivers of both vehicles were taken to local hospitals for treatment of moderate, non-life-threatening injuries, according to Lt. Jeff Nightengale, the Garden Grove Police spokesman.
The unidentified sergeant was driving south on Euclid Avenue through the Trask Avenue intersection just after 9:30 p.m. Sunday when his car was hit by the sedan heading east on Trask through the intersection, Nightengals said.
The force of the collision caused the police car to wind up on the center median on the south side of the intersection, while the sedan went up the sidewalk and into a car wash sign on the southeast side of the corner.
Both drivers are expected to be released from the hospital today, only the guy who was behind the wheel of the sedan will follow his care with a charge of driving under the influence.
Anyone who saw what happened is asked to contact their local office of the California Highway Patrol, which is investigating along with Garden Grove Police, or the city's Traffic Accident Investigation Unit at 714.741.5704.
Halfway through the crackdown–or from 12:01 a.m. Friday, Aug. 19, through midnight Thursday, Aug. 25, Orange County law enforcement has arrested 255 people for driving under the influence of alcholo or drugs, according to preliminary Avoid the 38 task force figures released this morning by the Orange County Sheriff's Department. Data will continue to be collected through midnight Monday, Sept. 5.
Here are remaining operations were informed you about earlier, part of 10,000 happening nationally:
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- A DUI checkpoint from 9 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 1, to 3 a.m. Friday, Sept. 2 in Cypress.
- Another one from 7 p.m. Sept. 2 to 3 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 3 in Mission Viejo.
The Costa Mesa Police Department
today announced it will hold a checkpoint from 6 p.m. to midnight Wednesday. As per the department's fairly new policy, the location was not disclosed.
As usual, funding for these operations is provided by a
grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety through the National
Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
If you know of any other checkpoints or heavy enforcements, post them in our comments or email me at mc****@oc******.com.
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.