Santa Ana Hopes to Get Drunk Pedestrians off Street

Santa Ana police will take the unusual step this month of visiting bars and liquor stores to raise awareness about the dangers of walking the streets while drunk in a city with the highest pedestrian fatality rate in Southern California.

The program, considered among the first in the nation, comes amid new evidence of the role that drunkenness plays in fatal pedestrian accidents.

A Times analysis of state accident data found that alcohol or drug use was the primary factor in 6% of the crashes for which Santa Ana police blamed pedestrians.

But in fatal accidents, alcohol plays a much larger role, in Santa Ana and nationally. Between 1984 and 1993, half of the pedestrians who died in automobile accidents nationally had been drinking, according to a study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

In Santa Ana, five of the seven pedestrians killed last year were drunk, according to police.

“These deaths . . . were all preventable,” said Police Sgt. Raul Luna.

The effort will focus primarily on bartenders and liquor store clerks. Police will go door to door, urging workers not to serve alcohol to people who appear drunk--even if they are pedestrians.

Officers will also distribute literature and placards inside establishments and in the community. The fliers urge people to call police if they see drunk pedestrians.

Although the total number of pedestrian injuries dropped from 170 in 1998 to 144 in 1999, the number of fatalities increased from five to seven, according to a UC Irvine study. Police worry that previous accident reduction efforts are not reaching some of the most vulnerable pedestrians.

Injury prevention experts said that, although anti-drunk driving programs are common, few cities have tried to address the problem of drunk pedestrians.

“It is a good idea, because [alcohol] servers are in a position to identify people that have had too much to drink and help them get home some other way,” said Craig Anderson, an epidemiologist with the UC Irvine Pediatric Injury Prevention Research Group.

Many of the fatal accidents in Santa Ana last year occurred under similar circumstances.

Most happened on busy commercial thoroughfares between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m., according to police. In many cases, the victims tried to cross streets at mid-block while legally drunk.

One man was hit while carrying a beer can. Another man’s blood-alcohol level was four times the state’s legal limit for driving.

Along West 1st Street, a one-mile stretch of road that accounts for nearly a fourth of all pedestrian accidents over the last three years, reaction to the city’s plans was mixed.

Oralia Leon, a cashier at Atlas Market Liquor, said anything the city can do to prevent the fatal accidents is a good idea.

“When people are drunk and they come in to get more, I think that they are going to kill somebody or themselves,” Leon said.

But others said police efforts are wasteful and will probably prove futile.

Jesse Maldonaldo, owner of Plaza Liquor near Bristol Street, says the city is unfairly targeting alcohol providers. Maldonaldo said he and other store operators already know the rules about not selling to those are drunk. He said the city would be better served by installing more traffic signals and crosswalks.

“The thing is, the pedestrians will cross the street no matter what,” Maldonaldo said. “They see the cars coming and they still cross. . . . I don’t think it’s fair that they try to blame people who sell liquor.”