DUI Attorney in City of Industry

Reviewed by Ron Chini, Esq. · CA State Bar No. 263308 · DUI defense attorney in Irvine, CA since 2009.
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Who responds to a DUI stop in a city built for business, not for living

City of Industry has something rare among California's small cities: a Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department station that carries the city's own name and sits inside its own borders. The Industry Sheriff's Station, 150 N. Hudson Avenue, City of Industry, CA 91744, (626) 330-3322, runs around the clock and covers far more ground than the roughly 12 square miles inside city limits — its patrol area also reaches La Puente, La Habra Heights, Valinda, and the Hacienda Heights and Bassett/North Whittier areas. Industry itself has never run a separate municipal police force; the station is a Sheriff's regional facility that happens to be headquartered inside a city of only 264 people, not a city-owned department.

Two of the San Gabriel Valley's busiest freeways cross inside city limits: State Route 60 (the Pomona Freeway) meets Interstate 605 (the San Gabriel River Freeway) in Industry, and SR-60 runs on to its brief merge with SR-57 just across the line in Diamond Bar. Those freeway segments fall within the territory of the California Highway Patrol's Baldwin Park Area office, 14039 Francisquito Avenue, Baldwin Park, (626) 517-8500 — CHP is typically the agency that stops a driver on the on- and off-ramps through Industry, while Sheriff's deputies from the Industry Station handle stops on surface streets like Hacienda Boulevard, Azusa Avenue, and Gale Avenue.

• Industry's 2020 Census population was 264 — the third-lowest of any incorporated city in California — spread across roughly 12 square miles that are about 92% zoned industrial and 8% commercial; more than 3,000 businesses operating inside the city employ an estimated 67,000 people on an average workday.
• Los Angeles County Fire Department also staffs two stations inside city limits, Station 118 on Gale Avenue and Station 43 on Stimson Avenue — a public-safety footprint sized for a daytime population in the tens of thousands, not for the 264 people who actually sleep there.

Where a City of Industry case is likely to land

A DUI arrest inside City of Industry is commonly routed to the West Covina Courthouse, 1427 West Covina Parkway, West Covina, CA 91790, part of the Los Angeles County Superior Court's East District — the nearest East District criminal courthouse to the city. That said, the court's own online jurisdiction listing for West Covina names El Monte, La Puente, Rosemead, and South El Monte, not City of Industry — and this site's own West Covina Courthouse hub has independently identified that exact listing as a known data-quality bug: it is actually the El Monte Courthouse's jurisdiction, mistakenly attached to the West Covina Courthouse's online record. That bug cuts both ways for Industry: La Puente, which shares the Industry Sheriff's Station's coverage area with Industry, is confirmed on this site's own La Puente page as an El Monte Courthouse city — which means Industry's own case could plausibly land at El Monte Courthouse instead of West Covina. We are not going to pick one over the other without better sourcing. Confirm the assigned courthouse from your own citation or by calling the court clerk directly.

The Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office prosecutes criminal cases arising in Industry; the city has no city attorney's criminal division of its own. One wrinkle worth knowing: effective February 3, 2025, routine traffic-infraction arraignments and trials were moved from West Covina to the El Monte Courthouse, 11234 Valley Blvd. — a change to non-criminal ticket handling that does not affect misdemeanor or felony DUI arraignments, which continue on West Covina's criminal calendar.

Getting booked, and getting your car back, after an Industry arrest

An arrest inside City of Industry typically starts at the Industry Sheriff's Station on Hudson Avenue, which works as an intake point rather than a place anyone is held long-term. From there, Los Angeles County's custody system takes over: men are usually moved downtown to the Inmate Reception Center, Men's Central Jail, or Twin Towers Correctional Facility, while women are generally transferred to the Century Regional Detention Facility in Lynwood. Whether someone is released on their own recognizance, posts bail, or qualifies for a cite-and-release depends on the specifics of the stop — call our office and we'll help a worried family member figure out exactly where someone landed.

Your vehicle and your criminal case move on separate tracks. In most routine DUI stops, the car is towed and stored, and you — or someone you authorize — can retrieve it once the release paperwork, towing charge, and storage fees are settled. A 30-day mandatory impound under Vehicle Code §14602.6 is a narrower, tougher outcome reserved for drivers who were also unlicensed, suspended, revoked, or driving on a restricted license without the interlock it required; it is not an automatic consequence of a DUI arrest on its own, which instead falls under the ordinary tow authority in Vehicle Code §22651(h). Ask about your specific situation during a free consultation.

A city built to manufacture things, where almost nobody lives

City of Industry is one of California's stranger municipal experiments. Voters approved incorporation 118 to 28 in a December 1956 election, and the city became official on June 18, 1957 — not to house residents, but, in the words of its own general plan, to create "an ideal setting for manufacturing, distribution and industrial facilities." A Stanford Research Institute study from the era called it a "special-purpose industrial city," and its founders' underlying worry was residential encroachment — nearby growth that could force factories and warehouses to compete with homes for the same land. The zoning still reflects that founding purpose: roughly 92% industrial and 8% commercial, with the 2020 Census counting only 264 residents across the city's approximately 12 square miles, the third-lowest population of any incorporated city in California.

What Industry lacks in residents, it makes up for in businesses — more than 3,000 of them, employing an estimated 67,000 people who drive in every weekday and go home somewhere else at night. A DUI stop here is statistically far more likely to involve someone leaving a warehouse shift, a client dinner, or an evening event than someone driving the short distance from their own front door, since almost no one's front door is actually inside city limits.

The map still carries a surprising list of landmarks for a city this small. Industry Hills Golf Club — two 18-hole courses named for Dwight D. Eisenhower and Babe Zaharias, built in 1979–1980 on a former landfill off Azusa Avenue — anchors the Pacific Palms Resort (formerly the Industry Hills Sheraton) and the Industry Hills Expo Center, a multi-purpose events venue that opened in 1981. The Puente Hills Mall, at 1600 S. Azusa Ave. inside Industry's own city limits, is recognizable to film fans as the Twin Pines/Lone Pine Mall from the Back to the Future movies, and the Vineland Drive-In is one of only two drive-in movie theaters still operating anywhere in Los Angeles or Orange County. The Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, a National Register of Historic Places site tracing back to 1841 settlers William and Nicolasa Workman, is the city's oldest landmark by well over a century — predating the industrial city that eventually grew up around it.

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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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