The state has given a $480,000 grant to the Orange County district attorney's office for anti-DUI efforts, officials announced.
The money, which comes from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration through the California Office of Traffic Safety, will help provide 50 additional law enforcement officers with specialized training to detect and arrest impaired drivers. It will also go toward the county crime lab's enhancement of forensic analysis of DUI drug cases, the district attorney's office said.
It's the agency's third Office of Traffic Safety grant for such anti-DUI efforts. In 2005, the D.A. got a $691,631 grant to aid prosecution of DUI cases by allowing a deputy district attorney and clerical support staff to focus exclusively on such cases. Three years later, the D.A. created a Vehicular Homicide Team, made up of specialized prosecutors and investigators to prosecute vehicle-death cases.
In 2011, the D.A. got a $640,000 grant to support a multi-agency effort against DUI drug cases, officials said. Of that, $350,000 went to the county crime lab for machinery to process DUI drug-related evidence. The D.A. partnered with the California Highway Patrol and Fullerton Police Department to provide 92 officers from all Orange County law enforcement agencies with specialized training to improve their ability to detect and arrest drivers under the influence of drugs. The grant also allowed two deputy district attorneys to prosecute drug-related DUI cases part time.
But you won't see a dime of the grant used to conduct sting operations on bars that are getting their patrons good and drunk them sending them out their doors to climb behind their steering wheels and put the rest of us in danger. The DA doesn't want to make the bar owners mad and risk political fallout. But forcing hundreds of innocent law-abiding motorists to pull their cars to the side of the road and tolerate police interrogations and searches to catch one drunk is fine. hah. It's all worth it as long as one life is saved.......hah. But bars where the drunks are fed gallons of booze are immune from enforcement action......hah. Modern justice is hilarious. Better than watching the old Saturday Night Lives shows with Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, Gildna Radner, John Belushi and Garret Morris.
BTW, My son was followed from a bar in Costa Mesa, the NBPD was staked out behind the parking lot, so it was entrapment, and his blood alcohol level was .08. He was cuffed and arrested, even though he was at the legal limit. I do not trust the money hungry, inappropriate use of power our local law enforcement uses now.