Drugs and Alcohol: March 2008 Archives

Nothing is worse than covering DUI tragedies.

I’ll never forget Jeffrey Lamont Dodley, a Lawndale man who was killed by a drunk driver while returning the Aladdin video he’d just watched with a niece.

Or South High School graduate Michella Matasso Fincannon, a 19-year-old newlywed killed by a wrong-way drunk. West High athlete Allison Dewart, 18, also died in that crash.

Tuesday, as Spring Break looms, officers with the South Bay DUI Task Force will conduct an expo at El Camino College to talk to students, distribute handouts, and conduct mock field sobriety tests to show the effects of drunken driving.

Students can wear special goggles that simulate being drunk while they drive a golf cart.
 
Officers also will set up a simulated sobriety checkpoint to distribute literature to students as they leave campus.

The expo runs from 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.

Deputies will conduct sobriety and driver’s license checkpoints from 7
p.m. tonight to 3 a.m. Saturday on Avalon Boulevard north of Elsmere
Drive, and on Avalon Boulevard north of Carson Street in Carson.

Here's what happens at a sobriety checkpoint. This clip is from a news broadcast about a checkpoint in Daly City.

It’s always scary to find out just exactly what’s going on out there on the roads.

Here’s what Hawthorne police Lt. Mike Ishii told us today about the department’s Friday night sobriety and driver’s license checkpoint at 135th Street and Prairie Avenue:

They arrested five suspected drunken motorists, and cited 45 people for driving with suspended driver’s licenses or no licenses at all.

One additional person was arrested for being intoxicated in public. Fifty cars were towed away.

And then there was Brandon Ferrell, 23, of Los Angeles, who police say pulled out of the checkpoint’s cone pattern and raced away at speeds up to 100 mph.

Officers in Hawthorne’s chopper followed him, watched him abandon his car and pointed him out to officers on the ground. They hauled him in near Rosecrans and Lemoli avenues.

Turns out Ferrell had good reason to avoid the checkpoint. Police say he had a large quantity of marijuana in his car.
 
Cops arrested Ferrell on suspicion of evading arrest and drug trafficking.

(The checkpoint, by the way, was reported in advance in the Daily Breeze, on dailybreeze.com, and this blog.)


 

The South Bay Regional Driving Under the Influence Task Force will saturate the area with patrols this weekend, arresting drivers who shouldn't be behind the wheel.

Police also have scheduled a couple of checkpoints to crack down on drunken driving.

All of this is in honor of St. Patrick's Day.

A checkpoint tonight will run from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. Saturday in the northbound lanes of Prairie Avenue at 135th Street in Hawthorne.

At 7 p.m. Saturday, police will start a sobriety and dui checkpoint on Sepulveda Boulevard at Hughes Way in El Segundo. The checkpoint will conclude at 3 a.m. Sunday.