Police Look for Motorists Too Full of Holiday Cheer

In what is becoming a holiday tradition, South Bay law-enforcement agencies have teamed up to patrol local streets for drunk drivers, while other agencies, including the Torrance Police Department, are conducting sobriety checkpoints on their own or adding more patrol cars.

During a two-hour sobriety checkpoint in Gardena on Friday afternoon, police stopped 387 cars on El Segundo Boulevard but made no arrests, Sgt. Gary Garrett said Saturday. In Inglewood, police made 11 drunk driving arrests Friday night at a checkpoint on Century Boulevard and Doty Avenue, but the number of cars that passed through the checkpoint was not available, said Sgt. John Hough.

And at a sobriety checkpoint from about 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. Thursday night, Torrance police stopped 1,066 drivers along Torrance Boulevard, Sgt. Ron Traber said. Of those, 15 were investigated for drunk driving and four were eventually charged, Traber said.

“I really don’t think (the checkpoint) came as a surprise to anybody,” Traber said, adding that Torrance police used the checkpoint primarily as an opportunity to educate people about the dangers of drinking and driving. Police handed out leaflets that recommended designating a non-drinking person as a driver.

“The idea was to deter people,” Traber said. “For our purposes, it went very well.”

Palos Verdes Estates police have added an extra patrol car to look for drunk drivers, cruising mostly along Palos Verdes Drive West and Palos Verdes Drive North, Sgt. Ron Echols said.

And sheriff’s deputies have added two patrol cars to be on the lookout for drunk drivers in Rolling Hills, Rolling Hills Estates, Rancho Palos Verdes and Lomita, said Lt. Stephen Huss of the Lomita Sheriff’s Station. The Sheriff’s Department provides law enforcement for those cities.

Elsewhere in the South Bay, seven cities and the California Highway Patrol are working in concert to ferret out drunk drivers.

Police departments in Gardena, El Segundo, Manhattan Beach, Redondo Beach, Inglewood, Hermosa Beach and Hawthorne are pooling resources and officers with the CHP to patrol streets throughout those cities.

Each department contributed one or two officers and a patrol car, said Lt. David Morgan of the Gardena Police Department.

In addition to the joint task force efforts, most departments said they are beefing up patrols within their own city boundaries, particularly on New Year’s Eve.

“I would say if you’re planning on drinking and driving, plan on bringing a toothbrush and a change of underwear,” said Morgan, explaining that such drivers risk spending a night in jail.

This year, sobriety checkpoint and special patrols in Gardena, Redondo Beach and Inglewood were held earlier than usual to target revelers headed home after office Christmas parties, police said.

Lt. Ken Kauffman of Redondo Beach said studies have shown that police departments concentrate their efforts to arrest drunk drivers during evening and late night hours, but drunk drivers are also on the road during the period just after working hours.

“Apparently a trend has emerged where we were missing dangerous periods, the hours after office parties being one of them,” Kauffman said.