Fresno Police DUI Program | ABC30 Fresno | abc30.com

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By ABC30

Friday, July 31, 2009

Fresno, CA 70 checkpoints greet drivers in Fresno every year. At anonymous hotspots for drinking and driving, police probe drivers about whether their night out has included too many of these.

The techniques vary from night to night. The idea is to keep drivers thinking twice about their chances of getting caught. For police, odds also keep them constantly re-evaluating which approaches are working best.

"When we find that one strategy is working better than another, then we'll increase the number of those," said Chief Dyer.

A grant from the office of traffic safety will pay for one full time officer to follow up with individuals who have repeated drunk driving offenses.

The money will also provide $378 thousand dollars for overtime costs. Police Chief Jerry Dyer says from last year to this year, he's seen an 18 percent decrease in DUI accidents. That statistic alone is enough to justify the intense efforts.

Chief Dyer said, "We will not back away from any of our DUI enforcement efforts. That is a crime in our community that leads to a lot of deaths and a lot of serious injuries."

Traffic officers will continue to balance checkpoints with other tactics, some that solely seek out impaired drivers and others that stake out bars where drivers are getting behind the wheel drunk.

Police say their experience has shown that since locations of DUI checkpoints often get around fast, it is not unusual to see a few techniques being used on a given night to make getting around the system more of a challenge.