UPDATE, NOV. 21, 4:21 P.M.: The Santa Ana Police Department just announced that it, too, will conduct a checkpoint tonight, from 9 p.m. through 3 a.m. Saturday in the area of 1400 South Bristol Street.
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ORIGINAL POST, NOV. 21, 6:06 A.M.: Hey, Southies: You should never drink and drive, of course. But tonight you REALLY shouldn't drink and drive as there will be a sobriety checkpoint in Irvine and extra patrols for boozy or druggy motorists in Lake Forest, Mission Viejo and Rancho Santa Margarita. (Oh how that last one tempts us with its name–salted rim shot!)
For those who get offended by cops revealing the location of their checkpoints, skip to the next paragraph because in the case of the Irvine Police Department it's about to be exposed: the area of Culver Drive and Barranca Parkway, from 8 tonight through 2 a.m. Saturday.
This is the first in a series of 10 Irvine PD checkpoints through September 2015, according to the agency, which funds the operation with a California Office of Traffic Safety grant, through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
That's the same way the Orange County Sheriff's Department funds its DUI saturation patrols, including tonight's from 7 through 3 a.m. Saturday. Traffic Unit deputies will blanket streets of Lake Forest, Mission Viejo and Rancho Santa Margarita known for drunken-driving arrests, collisions and fatalities.
Uber and out!
Email: mc****@oc******.com. Twitter: @MatthewTCoker. Follow OC Weekly on Twitter @ocweekly or on Facebook!
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.