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DUI and Drivers License Checkpoints in Marin County
News
The number of holiday drunken-driving arrests in Marin held steady in Marin while figures dipped elsewhere in the Bay Area. In a 21-day holiday DUI crackdown that ended at midnight Thursday, preliminary numbers show law enforcement officers in Marin brought in 97 DUI suspects, compared with 96 arrests last year. There were 14 traffic collisions involving a DUI driver compared with 17 such collisions the year before. No DUI fatalities were recorded either year. The number of Marin arrests were up compared with the 2006 holiday season, when 78 arrests were recorded. The Avoid the 13 enforcement campaign, which started Dec. 12, is named for the 13 law enforcement agencies in Marin as part of the nine-county Bay Area Regional Avoid campaign. San Rafael police spokeswoman Margo Rohrbacher, who compiled statistics for the program, said "we certainly want to get these drunken-impaired drivers off the road. "Though numbers are up from two years ago, we are locating some of them and taking them off the road," she said. Among those arrested was a Bakersfield lawyer who specializes in drunken driving cases; he was arrested on suspicion of DUI on Dec. 26 in San Rafael. In Sonoma County, officers during the holiday period registered 176 DUI arrests, down 21 percent from last year's total of 222 arrests. DUI holiday arrests throughout the Bay Area took a similar dip; there were 2,704 arrests, a 19 percent reduction from 3,360 last year. Five people died in DUI crashes compared with three last year. Two of those deaths occurred in Solano County, two in Santa Clara County and one in Sonoma County. In 2006, there were 3,037 DUI arrests over the holidays in the Bay Area and seven fatalities. "For the last few maximum enforcement periods there have been less arrests," said Officer Hugo Mendoza of the California Highway Patrol. "People are getting the message that it's not safe to be drinking and driving. It shows in the statistics."
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