DUI Attorney in Los Alamitos

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 Los Alamitos

Unlike several of its small neighbors, Los Alamitos runs its own police department rather than contracting with the Orange County Sheriff's Department. Los Alamitos Police Department was founded in 1962, two years after the city incorporated on March 1, 1960, and is headquartered at 3201 Katella Avenue, Los Alamitos, CA 90720 — non-emergency line (562) 431-2255, 24-hour dispatch (562) 594-7232. The department's lobby keeps limited hours (closed Fridays, weekends, and holidays per the city's own directory), but patrol and dispatch operate around the clock.

Roughly 48% of the city's small, roughly 4.3-square-mile footprint is occupied by the Joint Forces Training Base, a California Army and Air National Guard installation that traces back to late 1941: after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Navy relocated an aircraft training field from Terminal Island to a 1,300-acre tract here, and the base today also hosts the USA Water Polo National Training Center. Base security police are a wholly separate agency from the Los Alamitos Police Department, with jurisdiction limited to the installation itself — a DUI stop on a public street anywhere else in the city is LAPD's call, not the base's.

• The Interstate 605 / Katella Avenue interchange — built nearly 50 years ago and currently slated for a Caltrans/OCTA rebuild — sits right at the city's edge, about 1.3 miles north of where I-605 meets I-405, putting a steady stream of freeway traffic directly against Los Alamitos's own streets.
• CHP's Westminster Area office, 13200 Goldenwest Street, patrols the surrounding freeway network — I-5, I-405, I-605, SR-22, and SR-91 — and also covers the unincorporated Rossmoor and Midway City pockets that border Los Alamitos; a DUI stop made on one of those freeway segments near the city is typically a CHP case rather than an LAPD one.
• The well-known Los Alamitos Race Course, despite carrying the city's name and sharing its 90720 ZIP code, is not inside Los Alamitos at all — its address, 4961 Katella Avenue, sits across the street in the City of Cypress.

Where a Los Alamitos DUI case is heard

A DUI arrest anywhere in Los Alamitos is filed at the West Justice Center (Stephen K. Tamura), 8141 13th Street, Westminster, CA 92683 — the courthouse's own service list names Los Alamitos alongside Westminster, Huntington Beach, Garden Grove, Fountain Valley, Costa Mesa, Cypress, Stanton, and Seal Beach. The Orange County District Attorney's Office prosecutes the case; Los Alamitos does not use its own city attorney for DUI prosecution.

The West Justice Center's own page describes its criminal and traffic divisions as one building handling cases from all nine of those cities, open Monday through Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. We haven't found anything on that courthouse's own materials describing a separate felony courthouse for Los Alamitos cases specifically, so we aren't claiming one here — if your paperwork lists a different location, call us and we'll sort out why.

Booking and getting a car back after a Los Alamitos arrest

A Los Alamitos DUI arrest is typically booked first at LAPD, 3201 Katella Avenue — that stop is the intake step, not a long-term hold. Los Alamitos does not run its own long-term jail, so Orange County's booking system takes over from there: the main point of entry is the Orange County Sheriff's Intake Release Center, 550 N. Flower Street, Santa Ana, with a possible later transfer to the Theo Lacy Facility in the City of Orange or the James A. Musick Facility in Irvine depending on classification. Whether someone is released on their own recognizance, posts bail, or qualifies for a cite-and-release depends on the specifics of the arrest — ask us to help confirm current routing for a specific arrest, since practices can change.

Your car is a separate matter from the arrest itself. A routine tow after a DUI arrest usually lets you (or someone you authorize) retrieve the vehicle from the tow yard once you handle the release paperwork, towing fee, and storage fee under Vehicle Code §22651(h). A mandatory 30-day impound under Vehicle Code §14602.6 is a different, more serious outcome — it applies only when the driver was also operating on a suspended or revoked license, on a restricted license without a required interlock device, or without ever having been issued one, not for a DUI arrest by itself. Ask us to check which situation applies to your stop during your free consultation.

A small city with two neighbors it doesn't fully control

Los Alamitos incorporated on March 1, 1960, with roughly 3,400 residents — at the time, the unincorporated community right next door, Rossmoor, already had nearly 10,000 people, far more than the new city itself. Rossmoor remains unincorporated Orange County territory today, patrolled by the Sheriff's Department rather than LAPD, even though it shares the 90720 ZIP code and is often mistaken for part of Los Alamitos. The land itself traces back further still, to the Rancho Los Alamitos purchased by John Bixby in the 19th century, long before the Navy's wartime airfield or the city's 1960 incorporation.

As of the 2020 Census, Los Alamitos had 11,780 residents (up from 11,449 in 2010) — about 52.1% White, 32.0% Hispanic or Latino, and 16.5% Asian. City planning documents describe an effort to turn the Katella Avenue / Los Alamitos Boulevard intersection into a walkable Town Center with on-street parking and festival street closures, anchored nearby by Los Alamitos Medical Center. None of that changes where a DUI case is heard, but it's part of why the city feels larger and busier than its small footprint and modest population might suggest.

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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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