Pacifica Police to crack down on DUIs

Pacifica Patch previously reported the Pacifica Police Department's receipt of a $99,000 dollar DUI enforcement grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety to fund a year-long anti-DUI campaign.

The campaign will be a joint effort between the Daly City, San Bruno and Pacifica police departments. Those agencies have drafted an agreement on the structure and responsibilities each will assume within the program. That agreement will be signed by city officials within a week or two, said Ann Ritzma, finance director for the city of Pacifica.

Following is a summary of how the grant money will be used and the structure of the anti-DUI program:

$99,000 from the California Office of Traffic Safety will be paid to the Pacifica Police Department over the course of a fiscal year in quarterly installments.

The monies will be used to fund the purchase of a DUI command post trailer and to conduct DUI saturation patrols, a patrol tactic in which a large number of officers are concentrated in a single area, within Pacifica only.

Officers who man DUI checkpoints will be paid overtime. The funds for overtime pay will come from the grant money.

The terms of the contract, also called the memorandum of understanding (MOU), state that the overtime payment of an officer from any of the three participating agencies will not exceed $91.83 per hour.

Total compensation for the Pacifica, Daly City and San Bruno police departments combined for the year-long period of the program will not exceed $10,000, unless the Office of Traffic Safety increases the grant funding.

According to the MOU, this anti-DUI contract does not create a joint task force between Pacifica, Daly City and San Bruno police departments.

Instead, the Pacifica Police Department will request sworn peace officers from Daly City and San Bruno to supplement Pacifica's operations at DUI checkpoints at least thirty days in advance of the checkpoint event.

Daly City and San Bruno police departments will be allowed, but not required, to participate in these DUI checkpoints within Pacifica city limits. There will be no DUI checkpoints outside Pacifica city limits.

Either of the three agencies can terminate the whole or any part of its participation in the MOU by giving a thirty day written notice to the other agencies.