The Orange County Sheriff's Department's DUI Task Force will deploy “saturation patrols” tonight in Aliso Viejo, Laguna Hills, Laguna Niguel and Laguna Woods.
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Saturation patrols put special units on streets known for drunken or druggy driving arrests, collisions and fatalities. Tonight's operation runs from 7 p.m. through 3 a.m. Saturday.
“Over the course of the past three years, DUI collisions in areas contracted by the Orange County Sheriff's Department have claimed 21 lives and resulted in 497 injuries of our friends and neighbors,” reads a statement from the agency.
The op is funded by a California Office of Traffic Safety grant, through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
The same grant funding was used for a “Court Sting” Monday at Harbor Justice Center in Newport Beach, where undercover deputies targeted suspected DUI drivers whose licenses where suspended/revoked as well as drivers who were driving without a license.
Deputies staked out offenders who had been told of their license suspension or who had never been issued a driver license, following 14 from courtrooms to their vehicles to ensure that they were not driving. While some offenders complied with the law and had other means of transportation, three allegedly got behind the wheels of vehicles and drove off, according to deputies.
Joel Mardoqueo, 34, Oraine Anthony Hibbert, 20, and Stephen Jake Gibbs, 27, received misdemeanor traffic citations. Two of them also had their vehicles impounded for 30 days. (And don't get me started on impound fees!)
Deputies warn the trio or others who get popped for doing what they are alleged to have done could face additional jail time, longer driver license suspensions and other financial hits including attorney fees, court costs, lost time at work and the potential loss of a job or job prospects.
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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.