AVOID The 12 Ends 19 Day Crackdown With 211 DUI Arrests in Santa Barbara County

01/03/2008

Law-enforcement officers in Santa Barbara County have ended their second 19-day holiday crackdown with 211 arrests for driving while under the influence of alcohol or drugs, up 28 percent from last year’s campaign total of 165.


The enforcement push started Dec. 14 and ended at midnight last night.


Eleven DUI injury crashes are on the books, half the total of 22 last year and down even more from 25 the year before the campaign started, said Deputy Win Smith of the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Dept., Avoid the 12 coordinator.


One of the DUI crashes involved 20-year-old Adrianne Dazo of Santa Maria, an Allan Hancock College student who was five months pregnant with a boy, said her aunt, Rhonda Collins of Paso Robles. Dazo lost the pregnancy due to her injuries from the Dec. 30 collision two blocks from her home.


“There are drunk drivers out there who think they are not doing anything wrong, that they can drive safely, but they’re ruining lives,” said Collins.


The Santa Barbara County District Attorney’s Office is deciding how to prosecute the case. “If they charge the young man who hit Adrianne with manslaughter or murder, we’ll count the death of the fetus as a fatality,” said Smith.


No one died in last year’s campaign.


The last Avoid the 12 cooperative enforcement event of the season, a saturation patrol of downtown Santa Barbara on New Year’s Eve, made two DUI arrests from 19 vehicle stops.


“After midnight, there were very few cars on the road,” said Smith, who rode with the patrol.

“We mainly saw cabs. Several times people who had just come out of a bar tried to hail us, then made hasty and embarrassed retreats back into the crowds when they realized that we were a police car, not a cab.”


The campaign is named for the dozen law enforcement agencies in the county and is funded by the California Office of Traffic Safety through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.


In neighboring Ventura County, Avoid the 14 officials reported 449 DUI arrests, compared with 287 last year, and two DUI deaths, compared with none last year.


The campaign included four cooperative checkpoints for sobriety and proper driver's licenses, a multi-officer New Year's Eve strike force, in-city DUI patrols, maximum freeway saturation by three area commands of the California Highway Patrol and emphasis on DUI enforcement with officers on regular beats.