Here’s what you can expect from Modesto police, CHP on tonight’s New Year’s Eve
Modesto police want residents to ring in the new year safely, but officers’ efforts Thursday night and into the holiday weekend will be focused primarily on impaired drivers and armed revelers, not shutting down celebratory gatherings.
Department personnel are “cautiously optimistic” that with the COVID-19 curfew in place, nightclubs/bars being closed and residents hopefully for the most part staying home, there will be little to no violence and few impaired drivers on the streets, interim Police Chief Brandon Gillespie said Tuesday.
“But it is a time, of course, when revelers do like to come out and fire guns,” he said. “There are a lot of shots-fired calls that night, not because they’re shooting each other but shooting into the air and that sort of thing. And so we do staff up.”
Any New Year’s Eve, the department is at maximum staffing in anticipation of a higher volume of calls related to gunfire and other disturbances, as well as DUI, Gillespie said.
There was a triple shooting in west Modesto that killed a 14-year-old girl and wounded two other teens over Christmas weekend, he said. He hopes for a quiet New Year’s.
An overnight curfew is meant to limit travel and, hence, exposure to the novel coronavirus, to push down the spread of COVID-19, Gillespie said. It doesn’t mean people can’t run outside at midnight Thursday to shout “Happy New Year!”, bang their pots and pans, blow their noisemakers or air horns or whatever.
“We’re in the education mode, where we’re not going to be out on New Year’s Eve, pulling people over to specifically check to see if they’re in compliance with the health order,” said the chief, who assumed his interim position Dec. 25 upon the retirement of former police Chief Galen Carroll. “We will be looking for DUI drivers, looking for people who are impaired, that type of thing, so we will be doing our normal operations.”
Modesto police anticipate a lot of calls
Gillespie anticipates the usual “ton of calls” reporting shots fired and noise complaints and said they will be triaged as appropriate. He said he wouldn’t want to discourage residents from making those types of calls, but “I guess when I would encourage people to call is if they are seeing impaired drivers out on the street. ...
“Those are definitely dangerous people we need to remove from the roadway, rather than have them cause a collision that drastically impacts somebody’s life.”
The Modesto office of the California Highway Patrol also will have officers out for the second “maximum enforcement period” of the holidays, Officer Thomas Olsen said.
The MEP will run from 6 p.m. Thursday to midnight Sunday. “If your plans include alcohol, the Modesto Area CHP encourages all celebrators to designate a sober driver or use a ride-share option in advance,” Olsen said in an email. “Remember, buzzed driving is drunk driving. Let’s all make our safety and the safety of others a top priority this New Year’s Eve.”
The Christmas MEP resulted in the local office arresting nine people for DUI, Olsen said.
Statewide, the CHP reported Monday, officers made 573 DUI arrests during the 78-hour holiday enforcement period. The agency reported that at least 38 people were killed in collisions during that period — though not all DUI-related.
This story was originally published December 31, 2020 at 4:00 AM.
