Full Notification

To help save lives this past Memorial Day weekend, officers from the El Cerrito Police Department took part in Contra Costa County's AVOID campaign. The goal of the campaign was to raise awareness for buzzed, drunk, and drugged driving; as well as to help people plan for a fun and festive weekend.

The enforcement campaign kicked off on Friday May 27th with El Cerrito officers conducting saturation patrols throughout the City. Officers were specially designated throughout the weekend to stop drugged and drunk driving, as well as offer tips for alternate transportation such as; Uber, Lyft, Curb, or the old stand-by of designating a sober driver before the party starts.

El Cerrito officers also took part in a multi-agency DUI checkpoint hosted by the Richmond Police Department. In total El Cerrito officers stopped over 60 vehicles, administered over a dozen field sobriety tests, made 4 arrest for drunk driving, and one arrest for drugged driving. A total of 24 citations were issued for various driving offenses including 8 for driving on a suspended or revoked driver's license. 9 vehicles were impounded for a variety of reasons.

Some statistics from the California Office of Traffic Safety:

•Approximately one-third of all traffic crash fatalities in the United States involve drunk drivers (with blood alcohol concentrations [BACs] of .08 of higher). In 2013, there were 10,076 people killed in these preventable crashes.

•In 2013, approximately 1 in 5 child (12 and younger) passenger deaths were in drunk-driving crashes. Seventy-one percent of the time, it was the child’s own driver who was drunk.

•Of those child passengers killed while riding with a drunk driver, 44 percent weren’t buckled up at the time of the crash.
•In addition to the human toll drunk driving takes on our country, the financial impact is devastating as well: based on 2010 numbers (the most recent year for which cost data is available), impaired-driving crashes cost the United States $49.8 billion annually.

Thank you and please remember to designate a sober driver. Funding for the participation by the El Cerrito Police Department was provided through a grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety. Future drunk driving campaigns will occur around the Independence Day Holiday and the late August/Labor day weekend.