21-day Avoid the 12 crackdown in Santa Barbara County Ends with 223 DUI Arrests and Two DUI Fatalities

Santa Barbara County - January 3rd, 2009

Alcohol takes away people’s good judgment.

Here are a couple of illustrations of this universal phenomenon from last night (Dec. 30) in Lompoc, according to Deputy Win Smith of the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Dept. coordinator of Avoid the 12, the countywide crackdown on impaired drivers.

• Delivering homemade cookies to the Lompoc fire station. Good. Arriving drunk and driving away. Not good.

Result: A firefighter goes next door to the sheriff’s substation and tells deputies the cookie maker smelled like alcohol. They scramble after him, find him driving, then turn him over to the California Highway Patrol for arrest.

• Pulling over to a safe place sleep it off after drinking too much. Sort of good, although it would have been much better to stay out of the car entirely. Using the Lompoc Sheriff’s station parking lot to do it. Not good.

Result: Deputies see a car drive up and investigate, thinking someone is coming in to report a crime. They find a drunk woman behind the wheel, then follow the same procedure, turning her over to the CHP for arrest.

Its three-week run ends at midnight on New Year’s Day. Deputies, police officers and CHP officers have brought in 151 DUI suspects, a 29 percent improvement over statistics from last year’s winter crackdown. Figures cover up to midnight last night. The campaign ends at midnight on New Year’s Day.

CHP officers will flood the freeways tonight and tomorrow, with commanders assigning nearly all available staff to the road. Avoid the 12 plans a saturation patrol for the Santa Ynez Valley tonight.

The California Office of Traffic Safety funds Avoid the 12 through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, as it does all 40 similar campaigns in the state.