They say 'tis the season to be jolly and for many people that means a drink or two or three. That's why law enforcement is on the watch for drunk drivers through the holiday season. There is another profession that is starting to keep a watchful eye on excessive drinking.'s bartenders and servers and owners of clubs and bars in many area of San Diego's arm trying to prevent over serving their customers. Joining me is Marian Novak , director, Responsible Hospitality Coalition . Cally Bright is also here. She is a San Diego County district attorney and DUI homicide unit. This has been a bad year so far for drunk driving fatalities. Tell us about what happened this year. This year we were doing quite well as a County and we had five fatalities up until the middle of August. Starting in August we had eight fatalities and nine weeks. That is the amount of cases. Obviously, we've had a lot of impaired driving cases since then. We had won over the Thanksgiving weekend and two over this past weekend. People are not getting the message that driving impaired under any substance is dangerous to human life. As a result, we are seeing higher speeds and more people that are killed. Is are actually an uptick in drunk driving over the holidays? Yes and no. I think that awareness is out there so people plan better during the holidays because they know they're going to a party and they want to keep that in the budget and make a plan that we also start to see weather issues such as rain. We see a lot of people drinking more over the holidays. I think there are people that will say that just because of the holidays we will have more cases, but I think there's a lot of different factors. I do think people are more aware of what they consume the holidays, but no question that obviously there's a lot more law enforcement out there looking for a pair drivers over the holidays. It is illegal to serve people who are obviously drunk in a bar or club, but 43% of drunk drivers in San Diego say they had their last drink at a bar or a restaurant. So are the bars at fault here? I think what you think is intoxicated and what I think is intoxicated is different. You really can't tell how much they've had until the start slurring their words unless that's the only bar that dip in. So many people go from bar to bar. There are so many bars in a row that they will have a drink there and by the time they come to me, I don't know how many they've had. So that's probably the bigger problem. Subsidies require servers to get trained on selling alcohol and not over serving customers. Many don't. Those cities include San Diego, Escondido, and Delmar. Tell us what's in that training and why those cities say it's not for them. I don't think they think it's for them. There's enough training available and they don't want to have a new law that will have enough training. I think that is what they are looking at mostly the city of San Diego. There's 11 cities to have it in they think it is the greatest and it doesn't cost anything for their servers because the alcoholic beverage control piece for and it is a four our class. Every servers as they think it is the best thing ever for them. They have changed the way they do their work. They learn how to cut people off gracefully, check IDs, they know how to monitor people strings coming in. We were to make sure we have food service available. We really are promoting food serving until the end of the night. Than they Goto Roberto said 2:00 in the morning so now we are trying to keep the bars opening having food even if it is a small menu. There are so many things you can do to regulate the consumption that people have. Do we know of specific bars and restaurants that it could be traced back that people do leave the premises drunk and drive on a regular basis? What are the questions in the DUI investigation is how much they've had to drink and where they were drinking and when they finished drinking. That is something that the officers do asked them and when they asked him those questions, keep in mind that you're also getting answers for someone who's impaired. So obviously the officers to get some idea and with what we have nowadays which is about every restaurant, business having surveillance on cases that end up being a priest out -- fatality cases, they're going back to the bars in obtaining the video surveillance to obtain information so that that makes our criminal case stronger. That is something that we do on the criminal side. We find out where they been consuming alcohol and I know that when someone goes to a DUI class there asked where they drink and that is something that obviously the group does do some follow-up on. So how does law enforcement step up its efforts during the holidays? A lot of the law enforcement agencies have got funding from the California office of traffic safety. That funds are grant. So during the holiday season from Thanksgiving through the first week of January the California office of traffic safety provides funding for there to be more check stops and more checkpoints and additional saturation patrols, which is just literally more officers working overtime on any given night that are solely out there looking for impaired drivers. That's how they basically step up what they are doing because there's more officers out on the road looking for impaired drivers. I wonder if you have any advice for the holiday parties or even people who are throwing their own holiday parties. Absolutely. That means there's 43% coming from bars and restaurant and 57% coming from homes or parks are all kinds of places. The holiday parties at your home is a perfect place to really plan to be doing responsible drinking. Make sure you have food and nonalcoholic beverages and make sure that you have somebody there watching. Don't make alcohol the focus of the party. That is really important. Businesses are paying sometimes for their employees to take Uber's. That is really going to -- if you have to pay for your own drink, you will not drink as much. Monitoring your guests and having options is important. I've been speaking with Marian Novak, director, Responsible Hospitality Coalition and Cally Bright , team leader, San Diego County District Attorney's DUI homicide unit . Thank you both very much. Thank you for having me. Thank you for having us.
Three people died in San Diego crashes during Thanksgiving, up from two last year; DUI arrests were down however, from 66 to 53.
Cally Bright, deputy district attorney and head of the DA's DUI homicide unit, said more officers will be out on the roads in the next few weeks setting up DUI checkpoints. But while there is some state funding to help police agencies set up these holiday checkpoints, it is much harder to be proactive the rest of the year, Bright said. She also noted eight DUI cases resulting in deaths in nine weeks beginning in August; the County has averaged just under 16 DUI defendants charged with murder or manslaughter per year over the past six years.
"Honestly, we’re in triage mode," she said. "I do so many presentations and trainings for officers. When you look at the total, we’d like to be doing more of that. We want more outreach into high schools. Law enforcement is so overwhelmed with cases."
Several cities in San Diego County have laws requiring employees who sell or serve alcohol to be trained in cutting off drunk patrons and slowing down alcohol service, including Carlsbad, Chula Vista, El Cajon and National City, according to Marian Novak, director of the Responsible Hospitality Coalition. But the City of San Diego, Del Mar and Escondido, among others, don't mandate the state-supplied training.
Novak said the training can be vital to reducing drunk driving accidents because more than 40 percent of San Diego drunk drivers had their last drink at a bar or restaurant. That's according to the Coalition's "Place of Last Drink" survey, given to participants in licensed DUI programs across the county.
Bright and Novak join KPBS Midday Edition on Thursday with more on their work to prevent drunk driving deaths.
