Police Are Annoyed, but Not Greatly

It was going to be opening night for “Saturday Night Alive,” a new weekly series of sobriety checkpoints by the Laguna Beach Police Department.

But the ruling Friday by the 4th District Court of Appeal against such operations “kind of caught us off guard,” said Deputy Police Chief Jim Spreine. “I guess we’re going to have to reevaluate our program.”

The California Highway Patrol, however, did not share that uncertainty.

“We’ve just sent a message out to all of our field offices that they are to conduct the checkpoints as usual, pending further analysis of the ruling by the state attorney general,” said Kent Milton, a spokesman for the CHP in Sacramento. “We want to get a determination of how it applies to us or if it even does.”

Reaction to the court’s decision was somewhat muted among Orange County law-enforcement agencies that have run checkpoint programs in the past. It was viewed as a loss, but not a great one.

The most vociferous reaction came from the county’s chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Drivers in Orange.

“We disagree (with the court),” said Janet Cater, the chapter’s executive director. “Driving is a privilege, not a right. The streets and highways are shared by millions, and they have the right to be sure that the person who is driving a car, which is really a lethal weapon, is capable of doing it.”

Saying she saw no difference between sobriety checkpoints and roadblocks set up by the Border Patrol, the state Agriculture Department and at airports, Cater said her group “fails to comprehend why the court ruled that way.”

The greatest loss if the court’s ruling is upheld on appeal, according to police officials in three of the five cities in the county that have operated checkpoints, will be the program’s deterrent effect.

“I thought they were very effective,” said Spreine of Laguna Beach, which has twice set up checkpoints on the only three routes into the seaside community. “I don’t know that we were able to arrest every drunk driver in the city during the time the checkpoints were open, but I’m sure they were a deterrent to a lot of persons who might have thought about driving while intoxicated.”

Spreine said that, when the checkpoints were put up, the city-run Tipsy Taxi service “was used much more than at any other time.”

Spreine said he was disappointed that “that particular decision was rendered because of the fact it was an effective tool and deterrent.”

Buena Park Police Chief Robert Reber said Friday that he doesn’t believe sobriety checkpoints “are really that productive” in terms of numbers of arrests but that they serve the purpose of sensitizing the public.

“I think the value was that people knew we were there,” Reber said of the one time his department used a checkpoint in conjunction with a similar operation in neighboring Anaheim.

Pointing out that he prefers to rely on special teams of officers on drunk-driving patrols, Reber said the court’s decision against checkpoints would not have a serious impact “since it’s not a tool I had in my arsenal. Of course, I don’t like to have continual judicial restraints placed on us.”

The city of Brea, which set up a checkpoint in May and another on the Labor Day weekend, might have run such operations again over the coming winter holidays, according to Capt. Larry Baker, the acting police chief.

“Needless to say, we’re going to have to take a look and see if we can have them again in the future,” Baker said.

In Baker’s view, a police department has to “have specific reasons or goals which address those areas that are critical” when it sets up sobriety checkpoints.

Thus it was, he said, that the targets in his city were Carbon Canyon Road and Imperial Highway, both of which have produced large numbers of alcohol-related accidents in the past.

And, Baker said, the reaction to checkpoints wasn’t all that bad.

“We did a survey at the Carbon Canyon one, and probably 90% of the people were very pleased with what we were doing and encouraged us to continue,” he said.