Maricopa police admit to towing for dollars, promise change

BY STEVEN MAYER, Californian staff writer
smayer@bakersfield.com | Saturday, Jul 30 2011 09:00 PM
Last Updated Saturday, Jul 30 2011 09:00 PM

Felix Adamo / The Californian
Maricopa Police Chief Derek Merritt addresses what some citizens consider are too strict traffic code enforcement policies.
MARICOPA -- The chief of police in this hardscrabble town has had a change of heart -- and policy.
But the change didn't come easy. It was accompanied by sleepless nights and a rise in blood pressure for Maricopa Police Chief Derek Merritt.
No more, he says, will cops in this city of 1,200 in western Kern County pull over motorists for hanging a necklace from their rear-view mirror, having a crack in their windshield or driving with a burned-out license plate bulb.
In the past two years, Maricopa police have stopped hundreds of motorists for these and other "equipment violations."
The law is the law, Merritt says, and he's not about to apologize for his officers enforcing it.
But there's the law and then there's public sentiment, grand jury reports, media stories and political pressure.
"All of those factors came into play," the 41-year-old chief says without bitterness. "All I can say is, maybe we get it now."
But good police work is also important, he acknowledges, and frankly, while he's proud of his men, he's a little embarrassed by just how gung-ho some of his officers have been.
For example, pulling over motorists for driving 50 mph in a 55 mph zone.
"To be honest, that's chicken****," he says, not mincing words.
Other violations he wants to ease up on include license plates partially obstructed by trailer hitches and pulling over drivers who have clear plastic covers over their plates -- violations The Californian found in an examination of hundreds of tow records from the last 3 1/2 years.
Illegal? Yes. But Merritt says maybe it's time to reprioritize.
Earlier this year, a Kern County grand jury committee recommended disbanding the city's police department, saying the MPD lost track of 94 citations and formed an inappropriate relationship with Bakersfield-based Randy's Towing, a company that opened a tow lot in town and gave a piece of the action -- about 25 percent -- to the city.
Merritt says the jury never made it clear that the 94 missing citations were "unissued." He's not making excuses, he says, but the difference is significant between citations that have been issued to motorists and losing track of tickets that were blank.
When asked whether a huge increase in cars being towed -- beginning in 2010 -- was intended as a way to generate revenue for the city, Merritt didn't hesitate.
"I gotta be honest ... yes," he says. "The city's budget was dying."
BOOM TO BUST
It's been more than a century since a black-gold rush transformed this isolated bend in the road into a bona fide boom town.
Heavy crude still rises molasses-thick from the arid hills around Maricopa --albeit in smaller quantities -- but being atop one of the greatest oil deposits in California has not proven to be a guarantee of prosperity for this town made mostly of clapboard and nails, all tied together by the fierce independence of its residents.
Indeed, the oil profits that made some rich and others comfortable are not much in evidence in this economically depressed community where the main business district is dominated by a row of desolate storefronts and the city government appears to be flat broke.
In fact, the grand jury also recommended Maricopa lose its status as an incorporated city and be taken over by the county.
TOWING FOR DOLLARS
Through a public records request, The Californian obtained the Maricopa Police Department's vehicle tow records from January 2008 through part of June 2011.
The records were not uniform. Many included a detailed narrative report of the stop. Other narratives contained little detail; some stops included no narrative.
The records show that in 2009, the city towed 55 vehicles as a result of traffic stops by police. Thirty-four drivers were Hispanic, 21 were white.
The following year, those numbers ramped up tremendously, with the total number of vehicles towed surpassing 300, nearly four times the previous year's total.
Of the 308 vehicles impounded after traffic stops, about 78 percent were driven by Hispanics. About 19 percent were white.
In all years examined, including long before Merritt became chief in January 2010, the number of Hispanic drivers who saw their cars towed far outnumbered whites.
But charges of racial profiling, which have been flying around for weeks, simply are not borne out by the numbers, the chief says.
"I have no idea why more Hispanics are unlicensed," he notes, though he suspects most are illegal immigrants who, by law, cannot obtain a California driver's license. Mexican ID cards and driver's licenses shown to officers by many of these motorists lend credence to that theory.
"Seventy-eight percent of the people we issue citations to are Caucasian," Merritt says. "For whatever reason, more Caucasians are licensed."
The Californian looked only at citations involving vehicles that were towed, not all citations issued to drivers.
Maricopa resident Brian Warren, who attended last week's city council meeting, said "it's a valid argument" that the city used added enforcement to raise much needed revenues.
But as desperate as the city is for additional funding, Warren says, in the end, it wasn't a good idea.
"It's not right," he says.
DRIVING THROUGH MARICOPA
In reading hundreds of police reports on impound-related traffic stops, the reasons police gave for stopping vehicles included the old standbys like speeding and failure to stop. But according to the reports, many stops were made because a license plate light was not working, a plate was partially obscured or the car was missing a front license plate.
Other motorists were stopped for having tinted windows, a cracked windshield or something hanging from a rear-view mirror. "Modified exhaust" was also a common violation.
Some were pulled over for driving too slow.
On Jan. 31, Officer Jim Dinsmore stopped a 1998 Honda Accord driven by 25-year-old Jessie Valle.
Valle had seen the signs posted by a local business accusing the cops of pulling over as many cars as they could.
According to the report, he told Dinsmore that when he stopped at a stop sign in Maricopa, he counted to three, apparently so there would be no mistaking his intention to stay within the law.
"I was nervous," he told Dinsmore.
Even when Valle reached beyond the city limits to the section of Highway 166 where the 55 mph speed limit resumes, Dinsmore reported Valle drove at a grandmotherly 35.
Dinsmore pulled him over for going too slow.
Valle did not have a valid California driver's license, so Dinsmore cited him for that as well -- and called in Randy's Towing.
Valle couldn't be reached for comment. Tow records don't specify whether the '98 Honda was ever retrieved by the owner following the mandatory 30-day impound period.
The cost of the impound fees would likely have soared into the thousands, possibly a wash compared to the actual value of the car.
BEING TOO CAREFUL
On Feb. 24, 2010, Taft resident Alvaro Hernandez Velasco, who was 23 at the time, was clocked driving 25 mph in a 35 mph zone in Maricopa, according to police records. Velasco said he did not have a driver's license, but the computer system was down, so it was apparently impossible to verify his DMV status.
Velasco was cited for "impeding traffic," though no mention was made on the citation of whether there was any traffic to impede at 5:30 a.m.
There is no record on the ticket that Velasco was cited for driving without a license. Still, his 2001 Honda Accord was confiscated.
The following month, the same officer pulled over Simon Silva for driving 50 in a 55 mph zone. Silva had no driver's license, so his Ford Aerostar was towed away. It's impossible to tell from records supplied by police whether the van was released back into Silva's custody.
Neither Velasco nor Silva could be reached for comment, but it seems plausible that both men were driving below the speed limit in response to swirling rumors that the Maricopa police were pulling over more vehicles than there are residents of the city.
Kathleen Curtis, of New Cuyama, paid more than $500 to retrieve her 2004 Dodge Stratus from Randy's impound yard in Maricopa last year.
It was July 1 and her granddaughter was heading toward home after borrowing the car for a trip to Bakersfield. At some point, she became tired and turned the wheel over to her boyfriend, Felix Rodriguez, who was a few months shy of 18.
According to the officer's report, he pulled over the Dodge because the rear license plate light was out. It turned out the teenager did not have a driver's license.
The car was towed.
"I felt like they were pulled over for no reason," Curtis said.
When they retrieved the car, they found that the light had been unplugged from inside the trunk. They didn't accuse anyone of anything, but Curtis said she felt unsettled about the whole experience.
UNLICENSED DRIVERS A SERIOUS PROBLEM
Whether one agrees or not with the enforcement methods used in Maricopa, The Californian's examination of citations and tow records there reveals a serious problem: There are thousands of unlicensed drivers on Kern County's roads.
The newspaper's analysis of sobriety checkpoints in Bakersfield in 2009 revealed similar statistics. The checkpoints weren't nabbing large numbers of drunken drivers, but they were netting unlicensed drivers by the dozens.
Driver's license violations have been rising steadily in recent years, both statewide and at the county level, according to the State Office of Traffic Safety. While authorities say many of those who drive without a license are illegal immigrants, drivers can have their license suspended or revoked for a number of reasons, including multiple DUIs, nonpayment of traffic fines and other problems.
CHANGES
In January of this year, at least 33 vehicles were impounded by Maricopa police. But those numbers fell dramatically in the spring after a local businessman began to complain that the aggressive enforcement was killing business in the city, including sales generated by the thousands of vehicles per day that can pass through the city on a big weekend.
When the grand jury issued its report, and news outlets from Los Angeles to New York produced stories on the topic, the number of tows dwindled.
The practice came to a screeching halt in June, when Maricopa police impounded just five cars, a strong indication, critics say, that the department decided to rein in a policy it already knew was questionable at best.
Merritt says, in the case of Maricopa, city hall simply can't fight the forces that rose up in indignation.
The handwriting was on the wall. Visits from the American Civil Liberties Union, a scathing grand jury report and even pressure from some on the city council made it clear Merritt had to make the problem go away. He had to make changes.
But Merritt emphasizes the increase in citations and tows was not a result of a fundraising effort, at least not directly. Yes, the deal with Randy's Towing was seen as a way to pad city coffers.
"A few thousand a month for this little city," he says, "that's a lot."
"But the increase in enforcement is directly attributable, he says, to the large number of volunteer, part-time reserve officers he brought in to cover the city 24 hours a day, every day, instead of the partial-day patrols that were common before he became chief.
And some of the "reserves," he acknowledges, were too active in the field, too anxious to write tickets -- with one officer in particular writing many more citations than anyone else.
"To be honest, some of the guys needed additional training," Merritt says.
Merritt says he sincerely wanted to make a real difference when he became chief. People were driving through Maricopa as if it were "the Indy 500," he remembers. And no one seems to notice that arrests for methamphetamine sales and other serious felonies have increased during his tenure.
But now he sounds tired. He acknowledges he rose too quickly to the rank of chief, and he's had to learn as he goes.
He makes $25 an hour with no health or retirement benefits. He pays for his own gun and his own uniforms. And he stays in Maricopa four nights a week.
"We're just trying to do right here," he says. "That's all."