12:25pm | City officials are calling last Friday night’s DUI saturation patrol by the Long Beach Police Department “effective,” according to an e-mail sent via the city’s e-notify mass notification system.
The saturation patrol was the second such patrol conducted in as many weeks. From 6 p.m. on Saturday, March 26 until 2 a.m. on March 27, six police officers patrolled the city for the specific purpose of identifying and removing from the road impaired drivers.
During the eight-hour operation. the officers made two DUI arrests; issued citations to six unlicensed drivers and drivers with suspended licenses; impounded five vehicles; and issued 52 miscellaneous traffic tickets and 26 parking tickets, according to information in the e-mail.
The previous weekend, when 13 officers were assigned to the March 19 saturation patrol, officers made two DUI arrests, one narcotics arrest and one felony arrest; issued citations to eight unlicensed drivers and drivers with suspended licenses; impounded six vehicles; and issued 88 miscellaneous traffic tickets and 41 parking tickets.
As with the first saturation patrol, funding for the special operation was provided by a grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
According to the NHTSA, someone in the United States dies every 30 minutes in an alcohol-related car accident. That translates to about 50 people per day or about 17,000 people a year. Such accidents account for about 41 percent of all traffic fatalities in the United States.
And they are estimated to cost a pretty penny, too. According to a study cited by the NHTSA, alcohol-related crashes in the United States cost the public an estimated $114.3 billion annually, with roughly two-thirds of that sum being paid by someone other than the impaired drivers who caused the accidents.