Thread: CA: Carlsbad Police Ticket Day Laborers

Carlsbad Police Ticket Day Laborers
About 20 Laborers Cited In Past Two Months

POSTED: 4:40 pm PDT June 17, 2007
UPDATED: 4:50 pm PDT June 17, 2007

CARLSBAD, Calif. -- The Carlsbad Police Department is using an anti-solicitation ordinance originally written for newspaper hawkers to ticket day laborers who ask for work on public streets, according to a newspaper report.

Day laborers in Carlsbad have gathered for years along El Camino Real near the Country Store, where they are hired for temporary work.

To curb the practice, Carlsbad police said they have issued 20 tickets to laborers in the past two months. Advocates for the workers have questioned whether the law is being properly applied.

City officials said the tickets are appropriate.

David Blair-Loy of the American Civil Liberties Union of San Diego and Imperial counties said the citations raise legal questions about whether the law violates the laborers' free speech rights.

Neil Turner, a member of the anti-illegal immigration group, San Diego Minutemen, said he agrees with the use of the ordinance to cite laborers, which he said bring crime to the area.

http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/13518278/detail.html

I heard on the radio that the police chief said they would only cite those laborers who were soliciting work on streets where the speed limit was above 35 mph. He said if they just go on to side streets where there was no safety issue regarding cars stopping to pick them up on roads with speed limits over 35 mph there would be no problem. So apparently to the police chief this is only an issue of traffic safety and nothing to do with the illegality of their presence or their illegal employment, just a matter of not causing accidents on the roadway.

He even said he had no real issue with the day laborors themselves, only those who might cause a traffic safety situation. Nice, just push the problem onto residential streets where kids and families live, not address the issue of their lawbreaking presence or illegal work solicitations. After all we wouldn't want them to get hurt, now would we chief?

David Blair-Loy of the American Civil Liberties Union of San Diego and Imperial counties said the citations raise legal questions about whether the law violates the laborers' free speech rights.

Keep the ACLU busy. Perhaps they will eventually become as overwhelmed as every other agency.

I'm sure these illegals are going to run right over to City Hall to pay these tickets.

All that's going to happen is that Juan will become Jose the next day, and Juan's ticket will go unpaid while Juan suddenly dissappears "into the shadows."

I'm sure these illegals are going to run right over to City Hall to pay these tickets.

To quote el presidente Jorge Boosh from another post....."yeah, right."