Officer Armando Plascencia has heard the excuses, and he doesn't buy any of them.

"Officer, I'm here to pick up a friend who's had too much to drink."

"I just live around the corner."

"I have to be at home early in the morning."

Plascencia, 35, has spent enough time patrolling the streets to sniff out an inebriated driver from a sober one and figure out which drivers are lying about their sobriety.

Good luck trying to pull a fast one on an officer who made more than half of the Orange Police Department's DUI arrests last year – 325 to be exact – and set a record for the number of arrests in a year by a single officer in Orange County.

"I don't think that there's anybody that works any harder than Armando," said Lt. Jeff Burton, who supervises Orange's DUI team. "That's a lot of DUI arrests. He's definitely set the bar very high for anyone who comes in after him."

Plascencia, who earned a Medal of Merit from the department in February, will be recognized by Mothers Against Drunk Driving California on March 31 in Sacramento.

In April, MADD's Orange County chapter will give an award to Plascencia, along with 35 other officers who each made more than 100 DUI arrests in 2006.

"Insofar as DUIs are concerned, officers, both police and California Highway Patrol, are our first line of defense in that effort," said Gail Butler, executive director of MADD's local chapter. "They play a pivotal role in keeping our streets safe."

Standing 6 feet 4 inches tall with an NFL lineman's build, Plascencia is hard to miss. He's had people approach him in Old Towne and tell him he arrested their friends.

But the officer's intimidation factor doesn't seem to stop people from drinking and driving.

Last year, 626 people were arrested on suspicion of DUI in Orange. In 2005, 118 people were killed or injured in alcohol-related crashes – about 11.4 percent of the total number of people killed or injured in crashes.

A few years ago, the Police Department got a grant to hire two full-time officers who would focus on curbing DUIs. Teams of officers hired from a select group of candidates continued to challenge one another over the years, Burton said.

Plascencia surpassed his own goals, arresting an average of five to six people on weekend nights and three to four people on weekdays. He was recently promoted to a motorcycle officer.

"Armando is a very conscientious officer, and he always has been," Burton said. "He's a quiet individual, but he brings a real good spirit to people around him."

The goal wasn't setting a record but getting impaired drivers off of the road, Plascencia said.

He patrolled all parts of the city, concentrated on areas with bars and responded to crashes that may have involved alcohol. Not all drivers that the DUI team pulled over – up to 1,000 – were cited on suspicion of drunken driving, but Plascencia encountered a handful of people he had arrested before.

The worst was arresting intoxicated parents who drove with their children in the car, he said. The parents also faced child-endangerment charges.

"They're not only putting themselves and the public at risk but their kids, too," he said.

Plascencia said it is frustrating knowing that people he arrested could easily be on the streets again. For example, he arrested a person in November and caught him again the next week.

"I would like to see stricter penalties," he said. "If people feel it in their pocketbooks, they second-guess themselves (about driving while intoxicated). As far as jail time, multiple offenders need to be there longer. They need to get the hint."

Plascencia, who grew up in the San Gabriel Valley, said he hopes to retire one day and become a major-league baseball umpire.

On his success, he says: "I couldn't do it by myself. That record doesn't reflect me but the support of my department."


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