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County sheriff's office cracks down on DUI's over holidays
Arrests up 24 percent from last year
By Kevin Fayle
The sheriff's office of Santa Clara County, which serves Sunnyvale, participated in a successful crackdown on intoxicated drivers in the Bay Area over the holidays. Their efforts in the Avoid the 13 campaign occurred alongside those of 12 other Santa Clara County enforcement agencies, as well as the efforts of agencies from Alameda, San Mateo and Contra Costa counties.
The intercounty program resulted in 2,476 arrests for driving under the influence (DUI), with 894 arrests occurring in Santa Clara County. This represents a 24 percent increase over the last holiday season. However, despite the best efforts of the Avoid the 13 program, injury accidents increased from 23 during last year's holiday season to 31 this year.
The agencies involved worked together for the first time this season to prevent drunken driving injuries and fatalities during the winter holidays, and they will do so again during the Memorial and Labor Day weekends. They set out on the same days, reported their activities to a central site, and then all gathered together for a celebratory banquet after the program's completion.
"We're pretty much a national model," says Jan Ford, public information officer for the Avoid the 13 campaign, about the work. The California Office of Traffic Safety sponsors the campaigns.
Law enforcement agencies from Santa Clara County also participated in "strike team" efforts. The different teams directed patrols, targeting intoxicated drivers. Usually officers from five or six agencies worked together as a team.
The agencies usually have a high level of involvement in the programs among their officers. "You would be hard-pressed to find a law enforcement agency that didn't have half or 75 percent of their force participating in this effort," Ford says. For example, the Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety had their entire patrol involved in the crackdown.
Ford says that the Avoid the 13 used to offer free cab rides home during the holidays, but that now the campaign involves only public education and law enforcement. "We certainly welcome any other kinds of programs, though," she says.
Ford emphasizes the importance of combining enforcement and education, since "if you just do enforcement, you only reach one or two people at a time; if you put the two together, it's pretty invincible."
Ford credits the large number of people traveling through Santa Clara Valley as the reason for the increase in accidents over the holidays.
"We have a lot of drivers; the world works here, people come here from all over the place, and we have San Jose," she says.
The weather also did its part to help keep travelers in Santa Clara Valley safe. "We were lucky this year, in that we had good weather, which keeps people from crashing in the first place, and lessens the severity of the crashes they do have," Ford says.
Daniel Hindin also contributed to this article.
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Sunnyvale, California Since 1994
