Police Departments Team Up so Cities Can Hit DUIs Hard

A newly created police task force next month will launch a two-year effort to crack down on drunk driving by sending teams of officers into cities to beef up patrols and checkpoints.

Sixteen county police agencies will participate in the Orange County DUI Task Force, sending as many as 28 officers at a time into one city a month, usually on a holiday or weekend night. The task force will start next month in Brea.

“The message is simple: If you drink and drive in Orange County, your car is going to get hooked and you’re going to get booked,” Garden Grove Police Chief Joe Polisar said.

For smaller police departments, such as the one in Cypress, the task force will be a mammoth increase in staff, at least for one night.

Cypress typically has seven officers on patrol at any one time, and occasionally assigns a single officer to drunk driving enforcement. Cypress police set up about three DUI checkpoints a year.

Although the task force might come to town but once a year, officers say the presence of more than two dozen extra officers that one night will make an impression on drivers.

“A significant portion of the impact is the community perception, and making drivers aware of the danger of drunk driving,” Cypress Lt. David Birozy said.

Law enforcement agencies used a $591,000 grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety to help establish the task force. The money will be used for equipment and overtime pay for officers pulled from the cities.

In 1999, the most recent year for which statistics are available, 45 deaths and 1,856 injuries were related to drunk driving in Orange County, according to the local chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving.