DUI Attorney in Seal Beach

Reviewed by Ron Chini, Esq. · CA State Bar No. 263308 · DUI defense attorney in Irvine, CA since 2009.
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Policing a small beach town: Seal Beach PD, the Navy base next door, and CHP

Seal Beach runs its own municipal police department — it is not one of the 13 Orange County cities that contract out patrol to the Orange County Sheriff's Department. The Seal Beach Police Department handles DUI stops and arrests inside city limits, from the Old Town grid around Main Street to the Hill and College Park neighborhoods — including Pacific Coast Highway (SR-1) itself, where it runs through town; SBPD's own checkpoint history on PCH (below) bears this out. The California Highway Patrol covers the I-405/SR-22 freeway approaches near Seal Beach, which fall under the CHP's Westminster Area office.

Seal Beach also borders one of the largest Navy installations on the West Coast: Naval Weapons Station Seal Beach, roughly 5,250 acres of ordnance-storage and loading facilities commissioned in 1944 and still the Navy's primary West Coast ammunition depot. That base has its own security force with jurisdiction limited to the installation itself — it is a separate agency from the Seal Beach Police Department and has no role in policing the city's streets, Main Street, or PCH. If you were arrested anywhere in the city of Seal Beach, including near the base's gates, Seal Beach PD or CHP — not base security — made the stop.

• The Seal Beach Police Department received a $102,000 California Office of Traffic Safety grant for the 2025–26 fiscal year, funding DUI checkpoints, saturation patrols, and officer training in field sobriety testing through September 2026.
• SBPD held a DUI/driver's-license checkpoint on March 7, 2025 on northbound Seal Beach Boulevard south of Adolfo Lopez Drive, resulting in two arrests and eleven citations — a typical result for the department's periodic checkpoint program.
• SBPD has previously run DUI/driver's-license checkpoints on Pacific Coast Highway between 12th Street and Main Street — directly along the downtown corridor where Main Street's bars and restaurants sit across from the pier.

Where a Seal Beach DUI case is heard

A DUI arrest in Seal Beach — whether made by Seal Beach PD or CHP — is filed at the Stephen K. Tamura West Justice Center, 8141 13th Street in Westminster. The Superior Court's own location page lists Seal Beach as one of nine cities this courthouse serves, alongside Costa Mesa, Cypress, Fountain Valley, Garden Grove, Huntington Beach, Los Alamitos, Stanton, and Westminster. Our West Justice Center page covers the building itself; this page sticks to what's particular to a Seal Beach arrest.

The Orange County District Attorney's Office prosecutes the case — Seal Beach does not use a city attorney for misdemeanor DUI prosecution. A misdemeanor DUI stays at West Justice Center from arraignment through trial. If the charge is raised to a felony (for example, a DUI causing injury), the Central Justice Center in Santa Ana — the county's felony hub for every Orange County city — is where that higher-level hearing is set instead.

Booking in Santa Ana, and the routine-tow-vs-30-day-impound distinction

Seal Beach does not run a long-term jail of its own. Someone arrested for DUI by SBPD is typically transported to the Orange County Sheriff's Intake Release Center (IRC), 550 North Flower Street in Santa Ana — the countywide entry point for booking, medical and mental-health screening, and classification into the OC Jail system, with a bail cashier window open 24 hours a day.

Your vehicle is a separate issue, and the two outcomes are not the same thing. Under Vehicle Code §22651(h), an officer who arrests and takes you into custody can have your car towed as a routine matter — there's no mandatory minimum hold, and you (or someone you authorize) can generally retrieve it once you handle the tow yard's release paperwork and fees. Vehicle Code §14602.6 is different and more serious: it applies only when the driver was driving on a suspended or revoked license, on a restricted license without a required interlock device, or without ever having been issued one — not simply for a DUI arrest itself — and it imposes a mandatory 30-day impound, regardless of who shows up with the paperwork. Which one applies to your car depends on your license status at the time of the stop, not on the DUI charge alone; ask about this specifically during your free consultation.

Main Street, the pier, and why Seal Beach isn't Huntington Beach

Seal Beach is a genuinely small coastal town, and that matters for how DUI cases actually happen here. The Seal Beach Pier, built in 1906 and running 1,835 feet out over the water, is the longest wooden pier in Orange County — and, because Pacific Coast Highway cuts through town several blocks inland rather than running along the water, the town keeps a quieter, more low-key feel than beach cities where the highway hugs the shoreline. Main Street sits directly across from the pier and the beach, lined with restaurants, a well-known craft-beer bar, and an Irish pub — real nightlife, but on a small-town scale, not the high-volume bar-and-tourist corridor you'll find a few miles south on Huntington Beach's Main Street or PCH. SBPD's checkpoint history (including past checkpoints on PCH between 12th and Main) shows that officers still treat this strip as the city's main DUI-enforcement corridor, even at Seal Beach's smaller scale.

One more thing that sets Seal Beach apart demographically: a large share of the city is Leisure World Seal Beach, an age-restricted retirement community with more than 9,000 shareholders and residents — over a third of the city's total population — administered by the Golden Rain Foundation. Don't confuse it with the Laguna Woods retirement community in southern Orange County, which carried the "Leisure World" name itself until it rebranded as Laguna Woods Village in 2005; the two were built by the same developer, but they are separate communities in separate cities today. Leisure World's residents are not the demographic driving Main Street's weekend DUI patrols, but the community's sheer size is part of what makes Seal Beach feel smaller and quieter than its enforcement statistics around Main Street 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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