Police Blanket Valley in Drunk Driving Sweep

More than 150 Los Angeles Police officers fanned out through the San Fernando Valley Friday night in the city’s biggest drunk driving sweep ever, hoping to compel motorists to shy away from drinking and driving during the holiday season.

“We intend to make the Valley as safe a place as possible during the holiday season,” said Deputy Chief Ronald A. Frankel, commander of the LAPD’s Valley Bureau. “We want people to spend their money on holiday gifts instead of hospital bills.”

The effort started at 6 p.m. and was expected to continue until 2:45 a.m. today. It will be repeated tonight and on unannounced occasions during the holiday season, Sgt. Dennis Zine said.

Officials were optimistic Friday’s task force would break the department’s record of 171 suspected drunk drivers arrested in a single night’s sweep.

Unlike past crackdowns, this weekend’s sweep does not include sobriety checkpoints. Instead, motorists arrested on suspicion of drunk driving were being taken to an Immediate Booking and Release System installation outside the Police Department’s Van Nuys station, where they were fingerprinted and tested for alcohol while waiting for sober friends or relatives to pick them up, Sgt. Mike Pattee said.

The system includes two converted RTD buses--one used as a holding tank and the other for testing for alcohol and running record checks, officials said.

It allows officers to immediately return to the field after dropping off a drunk driving suspect, rather than spending the usual two hours booking the individual at a police station, Frankel said.

Zine said the operation is unique because it includes officers from all six Valley police divisions. Past drunk driving task forces were manned exclusively by traffic officers and usually did not exceed 20 officers, he said.

“It’s a send-off for the holidays,” Sgt. Jim Gicking said. “We’re letting the public know what it’s going to be like over the holidays. We’re going to saturate the area.”

As of Nov. 4, 23 people had been killed in drunk driving accidents in the Valley, Zine said. That amounts to 23% of all fatal accidents in the area, he said.

The toll is actually less than for the same period last year, thanks in part to stiffer sentences for repeat drunk drivers and better safe driving education, he said. The number of fatal and major injury accidents of all types in the Valley has decreased 16.1% over the same period last year, from 852 to 715, police statistics show. During that same period, drunk driving accidents decreased 14.4% from 1,575 to 1,348.

Sandy Freeman, co-president of the Los Angeles County chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, welcomed the operation, saying such sweeps have proven effective in persuading would-be drunk drivers to stay home or seek a ride from a friend.

“The publicity is a tremendous deterrent because the people that might drink and drive say ‘I may not be able to get away with that,’ ” said Freeman, whose 17-year-old daughter was killed by a drunk driver who plowed into the back of her disabled car three years ago.