Thread: Undercover stings target San Mateo day laborers

http://www.insidebayarea.com/sanmateoco ... ci_4355599

Article Last Updated: 9/18/2006 06:38 AM

Undercover stings target San Mateo day laborers

By Aaron Kinney and Michael Manekin, STAFF WRITERS
Inside Bay Area

SAN MATEO — They stand on the street corners — waiting.
Their eyes are peeled for a sign: A slowing car, a waving hand or off in the distance, the promise of an approaching pickup.

Another car — black and white — rolls into view and the tiny group scatters in slow motion, shuffling away in the opposite direction.

This is the perpetual cat-and-mouse game — day laborers versus cops — and it plays itself out nearly every day along Third Avenue in San Mateo.

But here's another variation on a familiar theme.

A lone day laborer stands on the corner of Third Avenue —and a pickup slows.

Trabajo!

The worker confers briefly with the driver, then climbs aboard — but today there's no work. The driver is an undercover cop and he'll be booking his passenger at the station house.

City police targeting day laborers have made 183 arrests in the past two years, according to documents provided by City Attorney Shawn Mason, and the vast majority have been made by plainclothes police posing as potential employers.

Most of the workers who get busted in a sting plead guilty to the lesser charge of jay-walking, winding up with a fine worth $200. Some, on the other hand, fail to appear in court.

But last month, for the first time, one of the workers challenged the misdemeanor charge, prompting a jury trial. A jury took just 10 minutes to find Sofonias Lopez Ramirez not guilty, ruling he had been entrapped by arresting officers.

The decision, rendered in the South San Francisco branch of the San Mateo Country Superior Court, called attention to the police department's undercover operations. Now, some are questioning how the city has chosen to resolve the difficult problem of day laborers.

Critics of the city's efforts say the police department's tactics are excessive and unfair.

"They're saying it's a public safety issue, but it's a racist act by the city in my opinion because they're targeting Hispanic men," said Tanya O'Malley, a private attorney who defended Ramirez. "You don't see them offering jobs to black men or white men walking down the street. There are other ways they could handle this."

O'Malley, who has handled 15-20 cases involving San Mateo day laborers, said the department's efforts to curb the employment solicitations aren't worth the time and effort.

"To me, it seems like a big waste of money for everyone involved: For the city, for the county and for taxpayers," she said.

The San Mateo Police Department devoted $233,386 last year enforcing the city's anti-solicitation ordinances, according to documents provided by Mason. The majority is spent stationing a patrol officer in the vicinity of the Third Avenue freeway exit, while less than 10 percent is devoted to the undercover stings to arrest day laborers.

The stings are supported legally by ordinances designed to prevent day laborers and prospective employers from contracting for work on the street. These ordinances were created in 2003 as a response to residents who were upset that upwards of 100 men were daily roaming city streets in search of work.

The residents were concerned that the day laborers were endangering property values and public safety, according to Vice Mayor Jack Matthews. In short, they were "a blight on certain neighborhoods," Matthews said.

In 2003, the same year the ordinances were created, the city established the Worker Resource Center, a facility where workers and employees could safely and orderly contract for work.

The center, tucked beside the railroad tracks on East Fifth Avenue, is run by the Samaritan House — a San Mateo-based non-profit health and human services agency — at a cost to the city of $165,000 per year. In addition to providing workers a clubhouse, complete with free ESL classes, the center delivers workers jobs at the rate of $10-$12 an hour.

The police officers who patrol Third Avenue, where most of the city's day laborers congregate, are responsible not only for enforcing the law, but for telling both employers and laborers about the Worker Resource Center, according to Police Captain Mike Callagy.

Callagy said he is comfortable with the department's tactics, which he believes benefit the workers who obey the law by using the Worker Resource Center. Those who follow the rules are cheated out of work by those who don't, he said.

"I think these individuals think they'll try to jump ahead of the others and get to the employers first," said Callagy. "That's the only consideration I can think of for why they would do that."

Everyday, between 100 and 200 workers show up at the center. However, only 15-25 percent of the workers get contracted for work — and these are higher percentages from late spring, summer and early fall, when the weather is good and work is plentiful.

That's why Marcos (who was reluctant to use his last name) found himself on the corner of Third Avenue and South Fremont Street the other day.

Until recently, Marcos had a good job: Washing dishes 14 hours a day at a Vietnamese restaurant for $7.50 an hour. But a couple of weeks ago, one of Marcos' bosses got angry and hit him.

So he quit and visited the worker center last week. When he found only two days of work for the week, Marcos decided to hit the streets.

Standing a few blocks away from the street where he got busted in a police sting one year ago, Marcos explained why he would tempt fate once again.

"We do this out of necessity," he said in Spanish. "One puts themselves at risk out of necessity."

"In the streets, there's more work sometimes," he added. "One goes to the streets because there's not much work in the center."

Marcos understands why police patrol the streets. In fact, he thinks they should maintain order. But he doesn't like "being tricked" by police in plain clothes and he doesn't understand the logic in issuing such large fines to day laborers.

"Look, I've found four hours of work this week," he said. "If a police officer comes and gives me a ticket for $200, where am I going to get that?"

Marcos also complains that police should enforce the anti-solicitation law more fairly by arresting more patrones (employers).

"It's not right that they only fine us," he said. "It's the patrones' fault. If they don't stop here, everyone would go to the center."

Less than 10 percent of the 150-200 people who have been charged with breaking the city's anti-solicitation ordinance were employers, according to Lance Bayer, a contract attorney who handles the bulk of San Mateo's day laborer cases.

"What concerns us most about this case is the seemingly unequal enforcement of the ordinance," said Severa Keith, a staff attorney for the Legal Aid Society of San Mateo County.

Keith said the society opposes not just San Mateo's "targeted enforcement" of its ordinance, but the ordinance itself. The organization opposes any measure that "criminalizes people who are looking for work," she said.

"They have a very negative impact on the poorest of the poor," she added.

But Callagy maintains that one reason employers are not arrested as often is that there are fewer of them to sting.

"There are many more workers than employers that are coming by and we are constantly out there looking for either violation," Callagy said. "We certainly aren't looking for any particular group; we're looking for anyone out there. We're looking to solve the entire problem, not just one facet of it."

City officials acknowledge that there is no perfect solution to the day laborer question. Robert Muehlbauer, director of the Community Development Department, which oversees the Worker Resource Center, said some people think the city shouldn't do anything to help undocumented immigrants, while others say the city isn't doing enough.

The city's policies on day laborers have rated a 3.5 on a 1-to-5 scale in periodic community surveys conducted by his department, Muehlbauer said.

Meanwhile, Vice Mayor Matthews is pleased that the city's carrot-and-stick approach for workers is working, though he hopes over time the police will be able to further reduce their presence along Third Avenue.

"I think a good number of people in our city would say they don't want people soliciting on street corners," Matthews said. "They don't like the environment it creates and they want to enforce the law."

Meanwhile, as many as 30 or 40 workers continue to roam the city's Third Avenue corridor, knowing the consequences full well.

Many of them will continue to be arrested.

But whether the workers will take a cue from Ramirez's recent court victory — by challenging their misdemeanors on grounds of entrapment — is a matter of conjecture.

On the police end, Callagy disputed the notion that the sting operations constitute entrapment.

"We respectfully disagree with the jury's decision in this particular case," Callagy said referring to Ramirez's victory. "This individual got into a stranger's vehicle and negotiated an agreement for work. This is not enticing someone to do something that they normally wouldn't do."

Meanwhile, O'Malley, the lawyer who successfully defended her client on grounds of entrapment, said she only wished she could defend more workers in such cases. The problem, she said, is that few workers are willing to come forward and risk challenging the city in court.

In the meantime, she said, she hopes the city will find other ways to deal with the problem.

"I'm not sure what all the answers are," she said. "But I just know that what the San Mateo police are doing is racist and it's entrapment and it is not necessary."

Staff writer Aaron Kinney can be reached at (650) 348-4332 or by e-mail at akinney@sanmateocountytimes.com. Staff writer Michael Manekin can be reached at (650) 348-4331 or by e-mail at mmanekin@sanmateocountytimes.com

Marcos also complains that police should enforce the anti-solicitation law more fairly by arresting more patrones (employers).

What a novel idea - isn't that what we've been saying all along? Heck, now even the illegal immigrants say we should be arresting the employers!

"I'm not sure what all the answers are," she said. "But I just know that what the San Mateo police are doing is racist and it's entrapment and it is not necessary."

The ever present and overplayed "race card".