Despite the warm weather and variety of activities in the South
County, the long holiday weekend was
”
relatively quiet,
”
according to Gilroy Police Department Sgt. John Sheedy.
Gilroy – Despite the warm weather and variety of activities in the South County, the long holiday weekend was “relatively quiet,” according to Gilroy Police Department Sgt. John Sheedy.
“Overall, it was pretty much business as usual,” he said.
Even with the annual Memorial Day parade, which Sheedy described as “outstanding,” there were no major police incidents to mar the festivities.
But a countywide campaign to crack down on drinking and driving was more eventful.
The Avoid the 13 Memorial Day weekend enforcement netted 74 arrests in Santa Clara County, which is 30 percent less than last year’s 106 arrests, according to Jan Ford, public information officer for the campaign.
There were, however, more collisions resulting in injuries involving alcohol this year, Ford said. There were 10 injury accidents in the county, compared to two last year. There were also three alcohol-related fatalities this year, one in San Jose and two in Palo Alto. Last year, no one died in DUI-related crashes in the county during the holiday weekend.
The weekend’s Avoid the 13 stepped-up enforcement began at 12:01am Friday and ended at midnight Monday. The next Avoid the 13 campaign, which gets its name from the 13 agencies that participated in the original campaign in 1973, will be during the Labor Day weekend in September.
Morgan Hill police reported a lot of activity over the long weekend, perhaps due in part to the Mushroom Mardi Gras festival on Saturday and Sunday.
Morgan Hill Police Department Cmdr. David Swing said officers responded to several fights during the festival, but only one person was arrested. Thomas Archibeque, 42, was arrested Saturday on suspicion of being drunk in public and resisting arrest.
However, there were numerous calls for service to a lounge at Morgan Hill Bowl in Tennant Station shopping center, Swing said.
“There was a lot of activity at StriXe that was new this year,” he said. “If you take StriXe out of the equation, it was about as usual.”
There were several incidents, he added, that did not occur at StriXe but as officers investigated, they found out the people involved had been at the popular lounge earlier in the evening and were intoxicated.
“The management (at StriXe) has been working with us, and we will continue to work with them to provide a safe environment for everyone,” he said.
It was during a routine patrol check early Saturday morning that a MHPD officer saw what appeared to be the end of a fight in the parking lot. Swing said the victim refused medical attention and told the officer he was unable to identify any of the suspects. There was a crowd gathered, he said, and though the officer told them to leave, most of them refused.
Rene Aguaristi, 24, of Morgan Hill, who identified himself as a professional boxer, Ruben Campos, 26, of San Martin and Andrew Ortiz, 25 of Modesto were arrested, and as a result, the bar was closed down 25 minutes early, according to Swing.
