The Bakersfield Police Department won’t say if there’s a connection, but we can assume with some degree of certainty that the Oct. 26 DUI checkpoint on Stockdale Highway had a specific source of inspiration.

The traffic checkpoint at St. Philip the Apostle Church was almost surely in partial response to the traffic death of 60-year-old Barbara Keyser Blair, whose car was struck just 200 feet from the church parking lot 12 days earlier.

These checkpoints are sending the right message.

The man accused of second-degree murder in the Oct. 14 crash had a blood-alcohol level of .19, more than twice the legal limit. Police say he was involved in street racing with another driver, both of whom have denied they were engaged in a speed contest.

This much is certain: Investigators say they blew through a red light at the corner of Stockdale Highway and Fairway Drive, just as Blair and her husband John were pulling into the intersection.

Second-degree murder is the appropriate charge for 38-year-old Jose Hernandez, who has prior convictions for drunken driving in 2003 and 2006.

The BPD’s traffic enforcement detail, operating on a grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety, through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, impounded 39 cars at the Oct. 26 checkpoint because the drivers were unlicensed or were driving on a suspended or revoked license. Sixteen citations were issued for vehicle code violations and two men were arrested on charges not related to alcohol or speed.

The BPD needs to keep up these checkpoints, inconvenient though they may be, not only because we need to keep racers and drunken drivers off the road, but because the public demands active, visible enforcement.

The BPD seems only too happy to oblige.

“We’re not to going to cut you any slack if we catch you drinking and driving,” BPD Sgt. Wally Whitaker said. “We’re going to give you a ride to jail. We don’t want to cut into anybody’s fun, but we don’t want to have any more accidents like the one we had on Stockdale Highway.”

John Blair, whose condition has improved from critical to fair condition, would doubtlessly agree.

As he wrote in a letter to the editor in June 2002, the “simple fix (to the problem of red-light runners) is assigning police officers to patrol intersections and write tickets to violators. ... Make it a long-term program, not just a one- or two-day program like in the past.”

Visible enforcement can have an impact. Blair’s plea is even more convincing today.