It wasn’t quite the Michael Jackson fanfest they expected, but law enforcement officials still saw an eventful Fourth of July weekend, according to a press release from the Avoid the 12 Campaign.
After canceling patrols in Santa Barbara and Santa Ynez for what officials thought would be a memorial service at the late King of Pop’s Neverland Ranch, law enforcement went ahead with a DUI crackdown in Lompoc.
Officers and deputies from the multi-jurisdictional countywide effort stopped 27 cars on the evenings of July 3 and 4, and conducted a dozen field sobriety tests. The stops resulted in the arrests of four people under suspicion of driving under the influence and two people for not having proper driver’s licenses, campaign coordinator and Sheriff’s Deputy Win Smith reported in the release.
The most dramatic arrest came on July 4 when officers stopped a man for driving recklessly, Smith said in the release. The man was arrested on suspicion DUI and for being unlicensed. However, when officers booked him, they found he was a registered sex offender out of compliance with court orders, they reported. The man was also a previously deported criminal who had apparently illegally reentered the United States. Officials placed an Immigration and Naturalization Service hold on him and continued the DUI campaign.
In the release, Smith credited possible “black and white fever”—panic at the sight of a patrol car—for the eventual arrest of a suspected
intoxicated woman who ran a stoplight in front of officers and was subsequently arrested.
An inebriated bartender was also placed for handcuffs, as was a minor who was arrested for DUI and for having an opened container of
alcohol in her purse.
Lastly, Avoid the 12 officers assisted Lompoc police in quelling a bar fight and arrested one suspect for public intoxication.
Officers are expected to hit the road again in an 18-day crackdown in the late summer, according to Avoid the 12 officials.
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This article appears in Jul 9-16, 2009.
