DUI Attorney in Signal Hill

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 Signal Hill

Signal Hill is not a Long Beach neighborhood — it's a fully independent, 2.2-square-mile city with its own government, and it has run its own municipal police department since incorporating in 1924. The Signal Hill Police Department is headquartered at 2745 Walnut Avenue and handles patrol, traffic stops, and DUI arrests on city streets like Cherry Avenue, Spring Street, and the hillside residential roads that give the city its name and its views.

A stop on one of the freeways that border the city — I-405 or I-710, both of which skirt Signal Hill's edges — is more likely to involve the California Highway Patrol rather than city police. CHP's South Los Angeles Area office, based in Torrance, lists Long Beach (and by extension the freeway segments that wrap around Signal Hill) among the cities it patrols, alongside Torrance, Carson, Gardena, Redondo Beach, Rancho Palos Verdes, Compton, and Willowbrook. Whether the citation comes from Signal Hill PD or the CHP, the case is filed the same way.

• Signal Hill Police Department — the city's own department, citywide patrol and DUI arrests within city limits
• California Highway Patrol, South Los Angeles Area (Torrance) — I-405 and I-710 segments bordering Signal Hill
• Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department — occasional mutual-aid response near county-contracted boundary areas

Where a Signal Hill DUI case is heard

Whether you're arrested by Signal Hill PD or the CHP, a Signal Hill DUI case is filed and heard at the Long Beach Courthouse, which has jurisdiction over Long Beach, Signal Hill, Catalina Island, San Pedro, Wilmington, Harbor City, and portions of the county strip. That's where arraignment, pretrial hearings, and any trial will take place.

Booking and getting a car back after a Signal Hill arrest

Signal Hill Police Department runs its own small jail at 2745 Walnut Avenue — two cell blocks holding up to thirteen prisoners total, plus one sobering cell set aside specifically for people arrested under the influence of drugs or alcohol. The jail holds adult male prisoners on open charges or warrants from Signal Hill and other agencies statewide; women arrested in Signal Hill are either released on a written promise to appear in court or transported to the Long Beach Women's Jail or the LA County Sheriff's Inmate Reception Center pending arraignment. Anyone not released before their court date is remanded into LA County Sheriff's custody. A car impounded at the scene is normally held at a tow yard designated by whichever agency made the stop, and any hold has to be resolved before the car can come back.

A city built on oil, surrounded on all sides by Long Beach

Signal Hill's whole identity comes from its geography: it's a hilltop city completely encircled by Long Beach, high enough that Spanish-era settlers called it "Loma Sental" (Signal Hill) because its elevation let native tribes signal with fires visible as far as Catalina Island. Shell Oil's "Alamitos #1" well blew in on June 23, 1921, kicking off an oil boom so large the Long Beach oil field produced roughly 260,000 barrels a day by 1923 and ultimately more than a billion barrels by 1984 — and in 1924, residents incorporated as their own city specifically to avoid Long Beach's per-barrel oil tax. That combination — a small, independent municipal government squeezed into 2.2 square miles, ringed entirely by a much larger city — is exactly why Signal Hill PD, not Long Beach PD, is usually the agency on a DUI stop inside city limits, even though the case still travels to the Long Beach Courthouse once it's filed.

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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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