Santa Clarita Sheriff’s Station Deputies Plan Checkpoint For Friday

Posted by: Perry Smith in Crime December 20, 2013 - 9:35 am 0 297 Views

Deputies with the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station are holding a DUI checkpoint Friday within city limits, said Sheriff’s Station Deputy Josh Dubin.

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The checkpoint will to take place within city limits, but deputies are not announcing the exact location ahead of time.

The checkpoint is expected to take place from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m.

“Over the course of the past five years, DUI collisions have claimed 11 lives and resulted in 255 injury crashes harming 363 of our friends and neighbors,” said Sgt. Rich Cohen, of the Sheriff’s Station’s Traffic Unit, in a previous interview. “If everyone planned ahead for a sober, nondrinking designated drivers these numbers could be lowered to 0.”

The effort is part of a statewide crackdown for the holidays, according to a Nixle report released Thursday.

“More than 215 DUI saturation patrols will be conducted locally in partnership with law enforcement around the county and statewide during the Winter Holiday Anti-DUI Campaign,” the statement read, including sixty-five DUI/driver’s license checkpoints, multi-agency DUI Task Force deployments.

Last weekend, officers from more than 100 police agencies reported 495 arrests countywide from Dec. 13-15, which is up from 456 during the same time last year, based on Nixle reports.

The last DUI checkpoint held by Sheriff’s Station officials took place in September, and netted four arrests.

“DUI checkpoints, along with regularly scheduled high visibility DUI enforcement, serves as a proven deterrent with the goal of removing alcohol and drugged impaired drivers and heightening awareness of the dangers of driving under the influence,” according to Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station officials.

Nationally, in the five years from 2007 to 2011, there were 4,169 people killed during the month of December in crashes that involved drivers with Blood Alcohol Concentrations (BAC) of 0.08 percent or higher, sheriff’s officials said.

Nationwide, 32,367 people were killed in motor vehicle traffic crashes in 2011, and 31 percent (9,878) of those fatalities occurred in drunk-driving-related crashes, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Californians witnessed a total of 2,835 deaths with 774 killed in DUI crashes on their streets and highways that year.

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