DUI Attorney in Highland

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 Highland

Highland has never run its own police department. The city has contracted with the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department for police services since it incorporated on November 24, 1987, and that contract is served out of a station dedicated to the city itself: the Highland Patrol Station, 26985 East Baseline Street, Highland, CA 92346, staffed with roughly 34 sworn deputies plus Neighborhood Watch, Explorer Scouts, a Community Oriented Policing (POP) team, Code Enforcement, a Multiple Enforcement Team, and narcotics and SWAT support. That is a different arrangement than the shared regional stations used by some neighboring San Bernardino Valley contract cities — Highland's station exists specifically to serve Highland, rather than splitting coverage across several cities from one building.

Freeway and state-highway enforcement is a separate lane. State Route 210 runs directly through Highland, with interchanges at Base Line Street, 5th Street, and Victoria Avenue — the Base Line and 5th Street interchanges have both been the subject of recent Caltrans/SBCTA widening and federal-funding projects specifically because of Highland traffic volume. Highland is also the gateway to the San Bernardino Mountains: State Route 330, built in 1891 as the City Creek Toll Road and reassigned its current number in 1972, begins near the SR-210 interchange on Highland's north side, runs briefly as a freeway, then narrows into a steep, winding two-lane mountain highway (roughly 15 miles of 6% grade) climbing to Running Springs and on to Big Bear and Lake Arrowhead. CHP's Inland Division is generally responsible for DUI enforcement and collision investigation on both of those state routes; we found Highland named only indirectly (rather than by name on a verified CHP office roster) in researching this page, so we describe CHP's freeway role here as the general rule for state highways passing through the city rather than a city-by-name confirmation.

• California's Office of Traffic Safety 2023 rankings placed Highland (Group C, average population 56,436) at 32 DUI arrests, ranked 12th of 103 comparably sized California cities, and 36 alcohol-involved-collision victims killed or injured, ranked 18th of 103 — a composite score of 146, ranked 11th of 103.
• SR-330's mountain grade is prone to storm-driven closures — Caltrans closed the route between Live Oak and Highland Avenue after a debris flow in February 2025 — which can affect how a DUI stop made on that stretch is investigated and documented.

Where a Highland DUI case is heard

A DUI arrest anywhere in Highland — on Base Line Street, Palm Avenue, the Victoria Avenue corridor, or the SR-330 approach to the mountains — is filed with the Criminal Division of the San Bernardino Justice Center, 247 West Third Street, San Bernardino, CA 92415. Highland is named directly on the San Bernardino County Superior Court's own "Where Can I File?" Areas Served list for that courthouse, alongside San Bernardino, Colton, Grand Terrace, Loma Linda, Redlands, Yucaipa, and the mountain communities above the valley. The San Bernardino County District Attorney's Office — not the City of Highland, which has no city-attorney criminal function — decides what to charge and prosecutes the case.

Booking and getting a car back after a Highland arrest

Because Highland has no city jail of its own, a Sheriff's deputy arrest at the Highland Patrol Station is an intake stop, not a holding facility — the county's custody system takes it from there, generally through one of San Bernardino County's central-valley detention facilities. Whether a particular arrest ends in a cite-and-release at the scene or a transfer into county custody depends heavily on blood-alcohol level and criminal history; family members can use the county's online inmate locator, or call our office for help, to confirm where someone ended up before driving anywhere.

Your vehicle is a separate matter from the arrest. A routine tow after a DUI stop in Highland — a tow made under Vehicle Code §22651(h) — generally lets you, or someone you authorize, retrieve the car from the tow yard once you handle the release paperwork and towing and storage fees. The mandatory 30-day impound under Vehicle Code §14602.6 is a distinct, more serious outcome that applies only when the driver was also unlicensed, suspended, revoked, or restricted without a required interlock device — not to a DUI arrest by itself. Ask us which situation applies to your stop during your free consultation.

Citrus, the Palm Avenue Historic District, and East Highlands Ranch

Highland's original townsite was platted in 1891 at the point where Palm Avenue crossed the Santa Fe Railroad, and the citrus industry built the town that followed. San Bernardino County's own history of the area credits Highland with sourcing some of the finest navel oranges in the world — sweet, essentially seedless fruit grown with the help of rail access and valley irrigation — and the railroad's arrival brought packing houses, workers, and investment to the corridor along the tracks. That history is physically preserved today in the Highland Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, which covers the 1891 original townsite plus a 1904 addition with development continuing through 1938: citrus-era packing houses along the old rail line, larger homes built by wealthy growers along West Main Street, and smaller worker cottages nearby. (The famous parent Washington navel orange tree that launched California's entire navel industry is a separate, specific landmark located in Riverside, not Highland — Highland's claim is to having grown and shipped exceptional navel oranges, not to the industry's origin tree.)

A very different side of Highland sits on the opposite end of the city: East Highlands Ranch, a large master-planned residential community that Mobil Oil's real-estate division began building in the early 1980s, shortly before Highland's 1987 incorporation. East Highlands Ranch's suburban tract-home streets and community parks are a sharp physical contrast to the historic packing-house corridor along Palm Avenue — both areas are part of the same city and the same Sheriff's patrol contract, but they read as two different eras of Southern California growth side by side. The U.S. Census Bureau's 2020 count of 56,999 Highland residents includes this East Highlands community alongside the older valley-floor neighborhoods.

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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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