PD's Traffic Enforcement Strike Team On Hunt for Violators

San Rafael police made 41 traffic stops Friday night during a concentrated effort to hunt down impaired drivers, and the result was zero arrests for drunken driving. And that’s a good thing, Sgt. Christopher Coale said.

“This is a positive sign that the education and awareness outreach conducted via checkpoints and the media are having an effect,” Coale said.

Coale said he and a pair of two-person teams kept their eyes open for vehicle code violations and pulled over drivers with “probable cause.” Even if the strike teams do not yield a DUI arrest, a lot of good can come out of them, he said.

“We don’t like waking up after an operation like this and hearing about a collision, a driver hitting five other cars on a hit-and-run or worse yet, a fatality,” he said. “If you get them before they get into problems, OK, we took them off the road.”

Police arrested one person with an outstanding warrant, cited and released one unlicensed driver and issued 18 traffic citations. One vehicle was towed.

Coale said there weren’t too many people out and about on Friday night, possibly because of the threat of nasty weather, “but drunks don’t worry about the weather as much as others.”

Another traffic enforcement strike team operation is coming up next Friday night and likely will be followed by a sobriety checkpoint, Coale said.

Friday’s operation was funded by a step grand through the California Office of Traffic Safety and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.