Full Notification

PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Repeat and Habitual DUI Offenders
Keep Petaluma Police Busy
8 Arrested in 5 Days

Petaluma, California – Despite the aggressive education and enforcement DUI campaign in Petaluma, repeat and habitual DUI offenders remain a problem for Petaluma Police as DUI remains the 5th highest cause of traffic collisions in the City.

Starting on Thursday last week, Officers stopped Scott Bruce Allen, age 24, from Windsor for speeding. Officers learned he had three prior DUI arrests and was required to only drive a vehicle equipped with an ignition interlock device installed. He admitted to the officer that he borrowed his father’s vehicle and knew he was not supposed to be driving. He was arrested and later released on a citation to appear for driving without the device.

On Friday, a team of Petaluma officers set out to track down DUI offenders that had outstanding warrants. Between 12pm and 1030pm officers attempted to serve 41 DUI warrants and arrested three DUI offenders.

At 1:50pm hours, the first DUI warrant offender was arrested. Thomas Vito Cittadini, age 23, from Petaluma was arrested at his home in Petaluma. He was later released on a citation to appear.

At 7:00pm, Francisco Aviles-Gonzalez, age 23 was arrested at his home in Petaluma. Officers initially checked his house and he was not home. As they were preparing to leave, Aviles-Gonazalez drove up in his vehicle with a suspended drivers license for DUI. He was arrested and booked in Sonoma County Jail where he later posted bail. The vehicle he was driving was impounded for 30 days.

At 7:30pm, officers arrested John Ross Moore, age 55, from Petaluma for an outstanding DUI warrant. Moore had two prior arrests for DUI.

During the warrant sweep, a three time DUI offender crashed into five vehicles near Mountain View Drive on Petaluma’s west side. The collision occurred at 2050 hours, and kept the team busy while they investigated three different collision scenes. The repeat DUI driver, Joel Garcia-Rodriguez, age 32, from Novato was driving WB on Mountain View Drive from Petaluma Blvd North when he swerved into the EB lane and sideswiped a vehicle going EB. He then struck two parked vehicles. He drove away from the scene and turned down Glendon Way at a high rate of speed and collided with two more parked vehicle. When he tried to flee the scene on foot he was detained by witnesses until the officers arrived. Garcia-Rodriguez was booked into Sonoma County Jail where he remains in custody.
On Saturday night officers arrested three more DUI drivers. The first was Alan Twyman, age 37 from Petaluma at 12:15am. Peter Castro, age 26, from Santa Rosa was arrested for his second DUI at 2:30am. The final arrest occurred at 2:40am when Bennet Anderson was stopped and arrested for his second DUI. Twyman was cited to appear, the other two were booked into Sonoma County Jail.

DUI arrests to date are down 12% from last year to date from 157 in 2011 to 138 so far in 2012. There have been 33 DUI collisions so far this year compared to 34 through the end of July last year.

The end of summer leading up to Labor Day is historically high for DUI fatal and injury collisions across the country. The AVOID the 13 Sonoma County DUI Task Force is ready to begin the two week anti-DUI campaign to address impaired driving beginning this Friday, August 17, 2012 ending on Labor Day, September 3, 2012.

Funding for the warrant sweep and AVOID operations are provided by a grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

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