[LASD] – Los Angeles County Sheriff’s 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 $450,500 grant awarded by the California Office of Traffic Safety to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department – Traffic Services Detail. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is dedicated to keeping our streets safe through both enforcement and education.

“Saving lives, reducing injuries, traffic collisions and property damage is important work,” said Sheriff Lee Baca. “Every life is a life worth saving and we will do our utmost to help keep the public safe.”

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 are among America’s deadliest crimes. In 2010, 791 people were killed and more than 24,000 injured in alcohol and drug-impaired crashes in California. In 2010, the contract cities patrolled by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department experienced 8 killed and 378 injured in these tragic crashes. 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 of the DUI enforcement strategies, while yielding considerable cost savings of $6 for every $1 spent.

“DUI checkpoints have been an essential part of the phenomenal reduction in DUI deaths that we 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, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department needs the high visibility enforcement and public awareness that this grant will provide.”