Pasadena Police Garner Grant to Fund DUI Checkpoints

The Pasadena Police Department has been awarded a new traffic safety grant for an anti-DUI program aimed at preventing deaths and injuries on our roadways.

Additional enforcement measures to combat impaired driving are coming, as a result of a recent $181,950 grant awarded by the California Office of Traffic Safety. The Pasadena Police Department is dedicated to keeping our streets safe through both enforcement and education.

The special DUI Checkpoint grant is to assist in efforts to reduce the number of persons killed and injured in alcohol and other drug related collisions in the community. The grant activities will specifically target impaired driving offenders, as well as educating the public on the dangers of impaired driving through the use of DUI/driver’s license checkpoints. When possible, specially trained officers will be available to evaluate those suspected of drug-impaired driving.

Drunk and drugged driving is among America’s deadliest crimes. In 2010, 791 people were killed and over 24,000 injured in alcohol and drug-impaired crashes in California. “Over the course of the past three years, DUI collisions have claimed 3 lives and resulted in 58 injury crashes, harming 82 of our friends and neighbors” said Pasadena Police Chief Phillip L. Sanchez. Crashes involving alcohol drop by an average of 20 percent when well-publicized checkpoints are conducted often enough. Checkpoints have proven to be the most effective of any other DUI enforcement strategies, while yielding considerable cost savings.

“DUI checkpoints have been an essential part of the phenomenal reduction in DUI deaths that we have witnessed from 2006 to 2010 in California,” said Christopher J. Murphy, Director of the Office of Traffic Safety. “But since the tragedy of DUI accounts for nearly one third of traffic fatalities, Pasadena needs the high visibility enforcement and public awareness that this grant will provide.”

Funding for this program is provided by the California Office of Traffic Safety, through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.