DUI Attorney in La Palma

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 La Palma

La Palma is Orange County's smallest city by land area — just 1.78 square miles — yet it is one of a shrinking number of small OC cities that still runs its own police department rather than contracting out to the Orange County Sheriff's Department. The La Palma Police Department is headquartered at 7792 Walker Street, with a small, dedicated force serving a quiet, strongly residential community of roughly 15,500 people. The department has seen frequent turnover at the top in recent years: Terry Kim announced his retirement as chief in 2023, Ron Wilkerson was appointed to replace him later that year, Wilkerson retired in 2024 with Captain Joe Guerrero elevated to chief, and Guerrero himself announced his retirement effective October 25, 2025 — leaving the city to recruit for the position. Confirm who currently holds the chief's title before referencing it in any filing or correspondence.

No freeway runs through La Palma's own small footprint. The nearest access is the SR-91/I-605 interchange, just outside city limits where La Palma borders Buena Park and Cerritos — State Route 91 itself clips the northern edge of the city (a 2020s Caltrans safety project along SR-91 is specifically mapped through La Palma and neighboring Buena Park). The CHP's Santa Ana Area office, which patrols SR-91 along with I-5, I-405, SR-55, and SR-22, is the agency most likely to make a DUI stop on that stretch of freeway; a stop on one of La Palma's own residential or arterial streets — Walker Street, La Palma Avenue, Moody Street — is handled directly by La Palma PD.

• La Palma is one of only a handful of Orange County cities under roughly 20,000 residents that still operates its own police department rather than contracting with the Orange County Sheriff's Department — a notable exception given the city's small size and land area.
• The city has had three different police chiefs in roughly two years (Kim → Wilkerson → Guerrero), with the position open for recruitment again as of Guerrero's October 2025 retirement announcement — worth double-checking before you assume who signed any report in your case.

Where a La Palma DUI case is heard

A DUI arrest anywhere in La Palma is filed at the North Justice Center, 1275 North Berkeley Avenue, Fullerton. The court's own location page lists La Palma among the cities that courthouse serves, alongside Anaheim, Brea, Buena Park, Fullerton, La Habra, Placentia, and Yorba Linda. The Orange County District Attorney's Office, not a city attorney, decides what to charge and prosecutes the case — La Palma's own city government has no role in a DUI prosecution.

A misdemeanor DUI arraignment, pretrial hearings, and trial all stay at the North Justice Center. The court's own materials say felony matters — for example, a DUI involving an injury — are instead heard at the Central Justice Center in Santa Ana, which handles felony cases for every Orange County city, not just La Palma. Read your paperwork closely to see which track your case is on.

Booking and getting a car back after a La Palma arrest

La Palma's own police building on Walker Street is confirmed as the department's headquarters, but it is not established as a county-recognized jail or long-term holding facility — like most cities its size, La Palma has no jail of its own. A DUI arrest typically routes into the county system through the Orange County Sheriff's Intake Release Center, 550 North Flower Street, Santa Ana, with a possible later transfer to the Theo Lacy Facility in Orange or the James A. Musick Facility in Irvine depending on classification. Call our office if a family member is trying to locate someone arrested in La Palma.

Your vehicle is a separate issue from the arrest. A routine DUI tow under Vehicle Code §22651(h) is released once you handle the release paperwork and pay the towing and storage fees. A mandatory 30-day impound under Vehicle Code §14602.6 is a different, more serious outcome that applies only when the driver was also unlicensed, suspended, revoked, or restricted without a required interlock device — not automatically for every DUI arrest. Ask us which situation applies to your stop during your free consultation.

From "Dairyland" to La Palma: Orange County's smallest city by land

La Palma has an unusual origin story even by Orange County standards. Dutch, Portuguese, and Belgian dairy farmers, pushed out of Los Angeles County by postwar suburban growth, settled the area in the 1940s, and in 1955 those dairymen incorporated the land as the City of Dairyland — reportedly the only Orange County city to go directly from open farmland to an incorporated city, done partly to keep residential tract development out. It didn't last: suburban housing arrived anyway, and by 1965, with the first tract homes built, voters renamed the city La Palma, after La Palma Avenue, nodding to the region's Spanish heritage.

Today La Palma is Orange County's smallest city by land area at 1.78 square miles, packing roughly 15,500 residents into that footprint, and it has been repeatedly named one of Money Magazine's "Best Places to Live." Its most distinctive civic landmarks sit at the La Palma Civic Center: an Eternal Flame, dedicated in 1972 and set within a Memory Garden, and a Freedom Tree, planted in 1973. For a city this size, that civic-minded, small-town character — combined with running its own police force rather than contracting out — sets it apart from most of its small-city neighbors in north Orange County.

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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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