Now the stricter license requirements and a rising number of checkpoints across the Inland area and state are stirring controversy that has reached a fever pitch in some cities with a large Latino population.
Critics say most Inland checkpoints economically punish illegal immigrants whose cars often are impounded for 30 days — the maximum time allowed — and can ill afford the approximately $2,000 to retrieve the vehicle. Protesters point out that drunken drivers usually lose their car for only one day. They say racial profiling is at play where checkpoints are placed.
Inland authorities said softer penalties, such as citations, for unlicensed drivers don’t work because many illegal immigrants lack identification and can’t be found if they skip court. Police say impounding cars is needed to deal with drivers without licenses, who account for about 40 percent of the nation’s hit-and-run crashes based on statistics of hit-and-run drivers who were caught. And police say that traffic volume, not a neighborhood’s racial composition, determines checkpoint locations.
“Usually people only see the fact that we’re creating a monster for them and we’re taking their car and taking their livelihood,” said Perris police Sgt. Dan Lingo, who supervises the city’s checkpoints. “The other side of it is they’re breaking California law and they become a risk to the public.”
Under community pressure, a few cities have dropped month-long car confiscation for a first-time unlicensed driving offense and instead hand out citations or do a one-day tow.
The California Office of Traffic Safety is calling 2010 the “year of the checkpoint” and plans a record $8 million in checkpoint grants, up from $5 million in 2009.
Some Inland residents think police can’t hold enough checkpoints, which usually run from 6 p.m. to past midnight with little notice and without an announced location.
Lee Chauser, pulled aside recently at a Perris checkpoint, said an unlicensed driver once hit him.
“He almost killed me … He rear-ended me going 35 mph,” the 64-year-old Hemet man said. “The government needs to find a way for the (illegal immigrants) to get trained and drive legally.”
Sheriff’s Deputy Angel Gasparini saw a truck pull over near protesters. Quickly, the driver and passenger switched seats. The truck began to roar off until police sirens brought it to a halt.
Gasparini told the driver, Reina Bernal, 52, that she didn’t signal before turning. He then asked for her license and that of her passenger and husband Hugo Bernal, who drove before the switch.
Hugo Bernal said he had no license. Gasparini said police would impound the truck for 30 days.
Reina Bernal begged for an exception, saying Hugo drove so she could tend to her sister, who was vomiting out the window and nursing a freshly cast broken leg. Gasparini proceeded to call for a tow truck.
“This is an injustice,” Reina Bernal told the officer in Spanish before signing the ticket.
A week and a half before, a police officer in Orange County had impounded the family’s other vehicle because Hugo Bernal, an illegal immigrant, had been driving unlicensed.
With the truck gone, Hugo Bernal would later lose his new job at a microwave manufacturing plant. He had been unemployed a year and a half.
http://www.pe.com/localnews/stories/PE_News_Local_D_checkpoint16.9c40e86.html
