Thread: Sting targets unlicensed drivers who get behind the wheel

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SAN MATEO COUNTY
Sting targets unlicensed drivers who get behind the wheel -- again
- John Coté, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 18, 2006


Javier Hernandez picked the wrong day to drive away from traffic court in Redwood City.

After Hernandez acknowledged to a traffic magistrate Monday that he had been driving without a license and agreed to pay a $185 fine, officers swooped in as he prepared to motor away in a Toyota Camry station wagon minutes after leaving court.

"I don't know what happened," Hernandez said as he was again cited for driving with an invalid license. His driver's license, which expired in December 2003, was confiscated. The car, which Hernandez said belonged to his brother, was impounded.

Hernandez was the only person cited Monday in a publicized sting operation outside San Mateo County traffic court targeting drivers without licenses or with revoked or expired ones. The operation was the third this year in San Mateo County designed to crack down on illegal drivers brazen enough to walk out of court and get behind the wheel, authorities said.

"People with revoked and suspended driver's licenses are over-represented in collisions," Sheriff's Department Sgt. Ken Taylor said. "This is about awareness. Who knows how many of those situations we can prevent?"

A similar sting in March outside the courthouse in San Mateo involved 99 traffic stops that led to 12 citations -- three for driving on an invalid license, said Timothy Birch, a Daly City police management analyst who helped coordinate the operations.

Sheriff's Department Capt. Don O'Keefe saw the decrease in citations as a good sign.

"The goal is compliance with the law," said O'Keefe.

Birch was more cautious in his analysis of Monday's sting.

"I wish I could say people were changing their behavior, but I doubt if that's the case," he said. He attributed the decrease to a relatively light court calendar where few drivers had been cited for an invalid license.

The stings are part of a $910,000 grant the state Office of Traffic Safety gave San Mateo County law enforcement agencies to conduct traffic operations, including sobriety checkpoints and school safety programs.

Fourteen officers participated in Monday's sting, which included plainclothes officers in court relaying information to waiting patrols on the street.

A man standing in line at the traffic clerk window, who declined to give his name, called the operation "entrapment, as far as I'm concerned."

Taylor rejected that characterization, saying officers were not trying to entice anyone into an illegal undertaking.

"If they just wouldn't drive, it wouldn't happen," Taylor said. "We're not forcing people to do anything they wouldn't do anyway."

He noted that Monday was a Spare the Air day in the Bay Area, when people could ride nearly two dozen public transit systems for free, including Caltrain, which has a station a few blocks from the courthouse.

Some people in court for not having a valid license availed themselves of other options. One, who told the traffic magistrate he was a taxi driver, stood watching as Hernandez's vehicle was towed. The man was picked up by a taxi a few minutes later.

E-mail John Coté at jcote@sfchronicle.com.

A man standing in line at the traffic clerk window, who declined to give his name, called the operation "entrapment, as far as I'm concerned."

I call it 'busted.' Imagine, the audacity of being fined for not having an appropriate drivers license and going outside to drive your car? Just another example of disrespect for our laws. I applaud the officers for trying to enforce at least some laws they are allowed to (you now what I mean).