Crime

A drunken-driving and driver’s license checkpoint will be held Friday in the Buellton area, the California Highway Patrol announced.

From 6 p.m. to midnight, CHP officers from the Buellton area will check every driver stopped at the checkpoint. Officials did not announce the location of the checkpoint.

The checkpoint is part of the national “Drunk Driving. Over the Limit, Under Arrest” summer campaign. The 12 law enforcement agencies in Santa Barbara County will be participating.

Sheriff’s deputies and officers from Allan Hancock College, Guadalupe, Lompoc, Santa Maria, the State Parks system and UCBS will set up an Avoid the 12 sobriety checkpoint in Buellton on Saturday, Aug. 14.

It begins at 7 p.m. and will continue until 3 a.m.

The campaign rotates its checkpoints throughout the county, said sheriff’s Deputy Win Smith, Avoid the 12 coordinator. 

Next on the enforcement calendar is an 18-day summer crackdown that starts Friday, Aug. 20 and ends on Sept. 6. It is part of a national mobilization.

“We’d far rather talk to sober drivers at the checkpoint than arrest people who’ve taken drugs or had too much to drink,” Smith said. 

“People should remember that you don’t have to be falling-down drunk to be arrested for DUI,” he remarked. “You may think that you’re not drunk, you’re just buzzed and therefore safe to drive.

A man and his family members helped authorities in a search for his stolen pickup Monday night, according to the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department.

Deputies responded around 9:40 p.m. Monday to a report of a stolen pickup near La Pita Place and Paula Ray Lane. Deputies, the victim and his family began searching for the truck.

About an hour later, a family member spotted the pickup in downtown Buellton driving toward the house where the truck’s owner lived, and notified other relatives. The relatives and the owner waited for the driver of the truck and detained him until deputies arrived.

The suspect, 34-year-old Jonah Waldman of Buellton, was arrested on suspicion of auto theft and driving on a suspended license.

When vandals cut the rope to the flagpole recently at Summerset Farm in Santa Ynez, they left the American flag lying on the ground and left the employees with no way to get the flag flying again, according to employee Sally Maher.

“We had to have the flag cleaned because there were marks all over it, but we had no way to get it back up on the pole so we called the fire department. They were the only ones we could think of with a tall-enough ladder," Maher said.

Source: syvnews.com

Full story: http://syvnews.com/articles/2010/07/02/news/valley/news05.txt