Grant will increase DUI enforcement

Deepa Bharath

The Police Department will use a $157,000 state grant to fund more

sobriety checkpoints and an additional DUI enforcement team during

the weekends, officials said Thursday.

The grant, probably the largest that has been awarded to the

police department’s traffic division, is needed for a city that has

gained notoriety for alcohol-related injury accidents, Costa Mesa

Police Officer Bryan Wadkins said.

In 2002, a two-person DUI team arrested 821 alcohol-impaired

drivers, Wadkins said.

“In spite of that, there were 65 alcohol-related fatal or injury

traffic collisions that year,” he said.

Those accidents accounted for 9.5% of all injury traffic

collisions during that year and ranked Costa Mesa as the worst of 44

cities statewide when it came to traffic collisions involving

alcohol, Wadkins said.

The grant money comes from the California Office of Traffic Safety

through the Business, Transportation and Housing Agency. The

department will use the money to fund an additional two-person DUI

enforcement team during Friday and Saturday nights starting tonight

through Dec. 31, 2005. Officers who sign up to be part of the DUI

team will be paid overtime.

The money will also pay for eight sobriety or driver license

checkpoints and for handouts to educate the public about the hazards

of drunk driving. Part of the funds will also be used for the Every

15 Minutes program at each of the local high schools, which educates

teenagers about the problem.

Drunk driving is a major problem for Costa Mesa possibly because

of the large number of bars and restaurants that serve alcohol in the

city, Wadkins said.

“Our city alone has 139 establishments licensed to sell alcohol,”

he said. “Add to that visitors to Newport Beach and Huntington Beach

who pass through Costa Mesa and use our city as freeway access.

That’s what makes the numbers so high.”

It also presents a major challenge to traffic officers in terms of

time and resources, said Lt. Karl Schuler, who wrote the proposal for

the grant. Schuler was recently transferred from the traffic division

to the patrol division.

“The challenge for us is we need to be vigilant and get impaired

drivers into our custody before they get going and cause accidents,”

said Schuler, who is also the state chair for Mothers Against Drunk

Driving. “Many times, patrol officers are busy with other calls, and

that’s how drunk drivers slip through the cracks.”

The additional enforcement team is likely to produce the desired

result -- to get to drunk drivers before they get on the road, he

said.

“There’s a definite correlation between putting drunk drivers in

jail and having fewer accidents,” Schuler said. “It does work.”