Overtime from grants funds the checkpoints, but having enough officers can be a challenge for Costa Mesa.

By Sonali Kohli Orange County Register

A Costa Mesa police officer stands in the intersection of Bristol Street and Randolph Avenue, blocking traffic the night before Halloween.

Behind him, officers and volunteers wrap up the last parts of setup – cones along the traffic lines to separate the lanes, a trailer with a dispatcher, a table for the officers keeping track of DUIs to sit at, with a heater behind them and a table with Starbucks coffee and pastries nearby.

Teenage Police Explorers stand on the sidewalk, watching the line of cars grow. It is their job to spot stray vehicles making illegal U-turns, trying to escape the checkpoint. A few officers patrol the streets around the checkpoint, to thwart the runaways.

In front of the officers, the line snakes back on southbound Bristol Street, between the LAB and the CAMP, two of the city's hipster hot spots.

In front of the officer, one woman sticks her head out of the car, trying to bypass the line.

“I'm a cop for Halloween. We're the same!” she calls out. The officer laughs.

At about 9:05 p.m., Costa Mesa Police Sgt. Bryan Wadkins speaks into a radio.

“Checkpoint has started.”

So begins a busy night, one of Costa Mesa's almost monthly sobriety checkpoints, which police say are an important part of their strategy to keep dangerous drivers off the roads. The operation runs like clockwork.

Two officers monitor each southbound lane, judging how many cars to stop so they don't back up traffic too much.

Early in the night, they stop every third car, then every other car. By 1 a.m., with traffic slowed to a trickle, every driver passing through gets at least a greeting and a pamphlet from an officer.

Those who appear impaired are asked to pull over and step out of their cars. On a flat stretch of sidewalk nearby, two to four officers conduct field sobriety tests.

Officers point out that this is as a good location for a DUI checkpoint since the location gets traffic from bars along Bristol as well as wine-heavy patrons leaving South Coast Repertory.

Three officers – a fraud investigator, a crime analyst and an animal control officer – sit at the table, marking cars on a piece of paper as they drive by or are stopped.

“HBD,” a police officer clad in a neon vest calls out around 10 p.m., from the car he's just stopped. That means the driver “has been drinking,” and will need a field sobriety test. “DL” means expired driver's license, the other common call at these checkpoints.

A police aide in a light blue shirt takes the keys and drives the Ford Escape into the parking lot of America's Tire Store.

The driver emerges, and Costa Mesa crime analyst Holly Carver circles a mark on a piece of paper she uses to keep track of the people pulled over during the night's sobriety checkpoint.

Carver, along with all the other officers at the checkpoint, are paid overtime for the hours they spend working the checkpoint, about 8 p.m. until 2 a.m. Depending on an officer's salary, overtime rates usually range from about $68 to $83 an hour.

The grant that funds the checkpoint mandates that every paid person there be a police officer, but it does not specify the type of officer they must be. That's why the three women are able to volunteer, and why a Costa Mesa park ranger can act as dispatch in the trailer.

But although the overtime is a good incentive for officers to volunteer for checkpoints, the department's waning officer numbers make it difficult to find enough to staff them. There are about a dozen officers working at the Oct. 30 checkpoint throughout the night.

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