287 DUI suspects arrested during countywide crackdown

In a winter holiday crackdown brightened by a zero in the DUI fatality column, police officers, sheriff's deputies and California Highway Patrol officers from the Avoid the 14 campaign in Ventura County brought in 287 DUI suspects.

"We are very pleased with the number of DUI arrests our Avoid the 14 officers made over the holidays," said Senior Officer Humberto Jimenez of the Oxnard Police Department, campaign coordinator, in a press release. "We prevented a great many deaths and injuries by taking these dangerous drivers off the road."

The Ventura office of the CHP brought in 135 of those arrests, followed by 48 for the Oxnard Police, 30 for police in Thousand Oaks, 23 for the city of Ventura, 20 for Simi Valley, nine for Camarillo, six for Moorpark and Santa Paula, four for Fillmore and Port Hueneme and two for Ojai.

The countywide crackdown began Dec. 15 and ended at midnight New Year's Day. Increased DUI enforcement included sobriety checkpoints, incity DUI patrols, CHP freeway saturation and emphasis on DUI enforcement with officers on regular beats.