November 18, 2015 -- Just in time for the traditional peak period for DUI arrests, Santa Monica police have $300,000 in new funding to crack down on drunk driving this holiday season.

The grant from the state Office of Traffic Safety (OTS) will fund a year's worth of special enforcement and public awareness efforts that will include DUI checkpoints and saturation patrols during the holidays, said SMPD spokesman Sgt. Rudy Camarena.

“As the holidays approach we will be rolling out enforcement, awareness and educational campaigns,” Camarena said.

The department is working on a public service announcement encouraging drivers who've had too much to drink to take a cab or public transportation, though plans for its release are still pending, he said.

SMPD also has Drug Recognition Experts, specially trained officers who can detect alcohol- and drug-impaired drivers at DUI checkpoints.

After seeing DUI arrests steadily decline from 1999, with some years in between when arrests spiked, Santa Monica recorded a 5 percent increase in 2014.

Last year, 193 people were arrested for driving impaired in Santa Monica, compared to 188 arrests in 2013.

In 1999, City police made 417 arrests, and the number fell steadily after that, except for 2007, when it spiked back to 407. Local DUI arrests jumped to 543 in 2006, and spiked again in 2008, when the SMPD made 690 DUI arrests, according to the department's 2013-14 annual report.

In the state, fatal DUI-related collisions had been falling between 2006 and 2010, but the numbers are now slowly rising, Camarena said.

“Particularly alarming are recent increases in pedestrian and bicycle fatalities, the growing dangers of distracting technologies, and the emergence of drug-impaired driving as a major problem,” he said.

“This grant funding will provide opportunities to combat these and other devastating problems such as drunk driving, speeding and crashes at intersections.”

OTS Director Rhonda Craft said that overall, California's roadways are among the safest in the nation.

“But to meet future mobility, safety, and accessible transportation objectives, we have to reverse this recent trend in order to reach our common goal – zero deaths on our roadways,” she said.

“The Office of Traffic Safety and the Santa Monica Police Department want to work with everyone to create a culture of traffic safety across Santa Monica and the state.”