DUI arrests up, injury accidents down

BY ERIC LINDBERG
DAILY SOUND STAFF WRITER

While DUI arrests in Santa Barbara County jumped 28 percent from last year during the holiday season, alcohol- and drug-related crashes causing injury have been halved, law enforcement officials said.
Authorities reported 211 arrests for driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs during a 19-day crackdown starting Dec. 14. Last year, officers arrested 165 people during the same time frame.

This year, County Sheriff’s Deputy Win Smith reported 11 injury crashes as a result of DUIs, compared to 22 last year and 25 in the year before the Avoid the 12 campaign started.
One of those injury crashes involved 20-year-old Santa Maria resident Adrianne Dazo, authorities said, a student at Allan Hancock College who was five months pregnant with a boy. Due to injuries suffered in the Dec. 30 collision two blocks from her home, she lost the child.
“There are drunk drivers out there who think they are not doing anything wrong, that they can drive safely, but they’re ruining lives,” Dazo’s aunt, Rhonda Collins, of Paso Robles, said in a prepared statement.
The County District Attorney’s Office is currently deciding how to prosecute the case, Deputy Smith said.
“If they charge the young man who hit Adrianne with manslaughter or murder, we’ll count the death of the fetus as a fatality,” he said in a press statement.
In Ventura County, two people died in DUI-related accidents and 449 DUI arrests were made, up from 287 arrests last year.
In this year’s last Avoid the 12 event of the campaign, a saturation patrol on downtown Santa Barbara streets on New Year’s Eve netted two arrests for driving under the influence.
“After midnight, there were very few cars on the road,” Deputy Smith said. “We mainly saw cabs. Several times people who had just come out of a bar tried to hail us, then made hasty and embarrassed retreats back into the crowds.”
This year’s campaign, named after the 12 law enforcement agencies in the county, included four sobriety checkpoints, a New Year’s Eve strike force, and DUI saturation patrols on city streets and highways.