CHP UNITS TO BE VISIBLE FOR HOLIDAYS.

Byline: Jesse Hiestand Daily News Staff Writer

At 6:01 p.m. today, amid the crunch of last-minute shopping and holiday commuting, the Ventura County California Highway Patrol will go on full alert and stay that way through midnight Sunday.

The ``maximum enforcement period'' will put nearly twice as many patrol officers on county streets as usual through the Christmas holiday and the following weekend, said CHP Officer Steven Reid.

This deployment and a similar one next week for New Year's are as much about helping stranded motorists as nabbing drunk drivers, he said.

``We're going to get as many officers out as possible, particularly during the commute hours and then the hours when we're going to get the DUIs,'' he said. ``People are also going to grandma's and when they break down in Ventura County we want to be there to help them out too. It's not that one element is more important than another.''

But, given the danger of drunk driving, the six or so patrol units on duty in coming nights will be joined by two or three ``roving DUI patrols'' this weekend and on New Year's Eve, he said.

These officers, who are not assigned to any particular area of the county, work during the hours when many impaired people are on the road, 9:30 p.m. to 3 a.m., he said.

While the CHP has no plan to use sobriety checkpoints, Reid said he hopes the increased patrols or word about them will encourage people to use a designated driver or avoid drinking and driving.

``It's not worth it,'' he said. ``A first-time DUI arrest will cost a person pretty close to $3,000 and you also lose your license. And God forbid you hurt somebody. That's a felony and you can go to jail for that.''

Last year the Ventura County CHP recorded seven accidents, two involving injuries, during a 30-hour maximum enforcement period around Christmas, he said. Two of those accidents were caused by drunk drivers and four DUI arrests were made.

A week later on New Year's, there was a like number of injury and noninjury accidents, but 15 drunk driving arrests during the 30-hour enforcement period, he said.

This year's statistics are expected to be significantly higher since Christmas and New Year's days each fall on a Thursday, which has prompted the CHP to extend the maximum enforcement period over 4-1/2 days.

The Thousand Oaks station of the Ventura County Sheriff's Department and the Simi Valley Police Department do not plan to put extra patrols on the streets during the holidays.

But Simi Valley police have assigned reserve officers to shopping center parking lots to combat the vehicle break-ins that become more frequent this time of year.