BREA : Drunk Driving Busts Down ‘Significantly’

Drunk driving arrests have gone down “significantly” since a drunk driving enforcement team was disbanded in October of last year, according to Capt. Jim Oman, acting chief of the Brea Police Department.

Oman said in a report to the City Council last week that driving-under-the-influence arrests dropped during the last three months of 1992 after two officers, who had worked exclusively on drunk driving enforcement, were transferred to other units.

The council approved the disbanding of the team to save money and help balance the 1992-93 budget. Council members, however, directed the Police Department to keep a close watch on drunk driving accidents to determine if the team should be reactivated.

In the first of such reviews, Oman said there is no cause for alarm. Traffic accidents related to drunk driving have gone down over the same period, though drunk driving arrests decreased.

“The point behind drunk driving arrests is to prevent accidents,” Oman said. “Right now, the statistics show accidents are still down. As long as they stay down, we’ll use regular patrol officers for enforcement.”

Comparing the period from October through December with the three-month period from July through September, Oman said that drunk driving arrests in Brea dropped from 125 to 87, a decrease of 43.6%. He said this was expected because the DUI team, before it was disbanded, made 46% of these arrests.

But Oman said drunk driving accidents made up just 4.6% of the accidents in Brea and 3.4% in Yorba Linda during the last three months of last year. In both cities, that was an improvement on the 6% during the tenure of the DUI team, Oman said.

He said, however, that the DUI team was responsible for reducing drunk driving accidents by half, from 12% in 1985 to 6% before it was disbanded.

Oman said that to make up for the loss of the DUI team, the 44 officers assigned to the Patrol Division have vigorously implemented DUI enforcement. From October to December last year, the officers made 87 arrests, a 30% increase from the previous quarter.

From July through September last year, patrol officers made 154 DUI arrests in Brea and 66 in Yorba Linda for an average of more than 30 arrests a month, Oman said.

“We have established a reputation for firm DUI enforcement,” he said.