Officers to make DUI house calls

The California Highway Patrol is urging drivers with outstanding
DUI warrants to turn themselves in this month or face an
embarrassing situation at home or at work.
CHP has just began a DUI Warrant Service Project, a statewide
effort to send officers out looking for men and women with
outstanding warrants for driving drunk. At last count, there are
948 outstanding DUI warrants in Sonoma County and 7,900 in the Bay
Area.
“We’re encouraging those with outstanding DUI warrants just to
turn themselves in and avoid having an officer come to your home or
your work to arrest you,” said Erin Komatsubara, a spokesperson for
the California Highway Patrol in Sacramento. “It’ll be
inconvenient, it’ll probably be embarrassing.”
Those arrested will be booked into Sonoma County Jail, according
to Sgt. Robert Mota. To avoid jail, Mota suggested those with
outstanding warrants to contact the courts and appear in walk-in
court. “If you do it on your own, you could avoid jail,” he
said.
Those who continue to ignore the warrant will be included on a
list officers will use to find offenders at home or at work. “We’ll
go through the county database and look for active warrants, find a
good address and officers will go out and take that person into
custody,” said Mota. “If you want to avoid the visit you should
take care of the warrant on your own.”
The program is being paid for by a $311,568 grant from the
California Office of Traffic Safety through the National Highway
Traffic Safety Administration, the same agencies that pay for the
AVOID the 13 program. CHP officials hope that 6,000 warrants will
be served by Sept. 30.
“The people who are wanted made the poor choice to drink and
drive and were arrested for DUI,” said CHP Commissioner Joe Farrow.
“Afterward they ignored court orders, failing to appear to refusing
to pay the imposed fine and address other court sanctions.”
The DUI Warrant Service Project is designed to hold these
drivers accountable for their actions by sending officers out
looking for them. Grant monies will pay for special teams of
officers to make these calls while the normal shifts continue
patrolling the roads.
Drunk driving has led to some of Sonoma County’s biggest
headlines and criminal cases in the past year. On Monday, a Sonoma
County judge sentenced a Santa Rosa man to five years, eight months
in state prison for his 13th DUI conviction. On March 1, a
Healdsburg man was arrested on suspicion of drunk driving after he
wrecked his car on Frei Road, killing one of his passengers and
injuring himself and another.
In January, two men appeared in court for involvement in drunk
driving fatalities. Ryan Carr of Windsor pled guilty to five felony
counts of manslaughter while intoxicated on Jan. 4 for a 2007 crash
on Highway 101 that killed five. In a separate case, Jose
Botello-Soto was sentenced to six years in prison for killing a
Cloverdale woman in a wrong-way accident on Highway 101.
And then there was Lora Larsen of Guerneville who made headlines
after she was arrested twice in the same week by the same
officer.
“DUI is such a huge problem,” said Komatsubara. “People are not
getting the issue. Don’t drink and drive. It’s not safe. You
endanger yourself and others.”