DUI Attorney in Bell Gardens

Reviewed by Ron Chini, Esq. · CA State Bar No. 263308 · DUI defense attorney in Irvine, CA since 2009.
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How DUIs are policed in Bell Gardens

Bell Gardens runs its own independent municipal police department — it does not contract with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department for patrol. Bell Gardens Police Department, headquartered at 7100 S. Garfield Avenue and headed by Chief Paul Camacho, fields roughly 43 sworn officers among a staff of about 79. That department, not a sheriff's deputy, is the agency most likely to make a DUI stop on streets like Eastern Avenue, Garfield Avenue, Florence Avenue, or Scout Avenue.

Because Bell Gardens sits directly against the I-710 corridor, the California Highway Patrol's East Los Angeles Area office also patrols in and around the city — CHP's East LA Area explicitly covers the I-710 corridor as part of its territory, alongside I-10, SR-60, and a section of I-5. A DUI arrest made on or near the 710 is often a CHP case even though the surface-street stop happened inside Bell Gardens city limits.

• Bell Gardens Police Department — city streets and neighborhoods, including the area around the Bicycle Hotel & Casino
• California Highway Patrol, East Los Angeles Area — the I-710 corridor and nearby freeway on/off-ramps
• Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, East LA Station — receives transferred custody when a Bell Gardens PD hold runs past its 4-hour limit

Where a Bell Gardens DUI case is heard

Regardless of which agency makes the stop, a Bell Gardens DUI case is filed at the Downey Courthouse. The Los Angeles County court system's own locator confirms the Downey Courthouse has jurisdiction over cases arising in Bell, Bell Gardens, Downey, La Mirada, Norwalk, and South Gate. That means your arraignment, pretrial hearings, and (if it goes that far) trial all happen at the same Downey courthouse building, not in Bell Gardens itself — the city has no courthouse of its own.

Booking and getting a car back after a Bell Gardens arrest

Bell Gardens Police Department keeps its own small city jail, but it is a short-term holding facility only — bookings there are capped at about 4 hours. If you aren't released on citation or bail inside that window, you're transferred into the Los Angeles County Sheriff's system, typically starting at the East Los Angeles Sheriff's Station before further transfer: men are usually held at Men's Central Jail, Twin Towers Correctional Facility, or Pitchess Detention Center, and women at the Century Regional Detention Facility in Lynwood. A car impounded during the stop is normally held at a tow yard designated by whichever agency made the arrest — Bell Gardens PD or CHP — and any hold on the vehicle has to be resolved before it's released.

The Bicycle Casino and Bell Gardens' density — not to be confused with Bell

Bell Gardens is home to the Bicycle Hotel & Casino — "The Bike" — one of the largest poker casinos in the world and one of only six cities out of 88 in Los Angeles County that permits casino-style card room gambling. It's a genuine destination that draws traffic from across the region, and DUI stops in the surrounding blocks are routine for Bell Gardens PD, especially late at night. The city itself is remarkable for its density: at the 2020 census Bell Gardens packed 39,501 residents into just 2.46 square miles — a density of roughly 16,064 people per square mile, among the highest of any small city in the country — with a population that is 96.18% Hispanic/Latino.

Bell Gardens is not the same city as Bell, despite the nearly identical name, shared namesake, and shared border. Bell Gardens incorporated on August 1, 1961, and had 39,501 residents at the 2020 census; the separate city of Bell incorporated on November 7, 1927, and had 33,559 residents at the 2020 census. Both are named after the same 19th-century businessman, James George Bell, and both run their own independent police departments — but they are two different cities with two different city governments, two different police chiefs, and (for DUI purposes) the same Downey Courthouse, which is where the confusion usually starts.

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Ron Chini, Esq.

DUI Defense Attorney · CA State Bar No. 263308

Ron defends DUI cases across Southern California from his Irvine office, in English and Farsi — and works directly with you, not a call center.

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