Grass-roots group says many support Escondido driver's license checkpoints

By: PAUL EAKINS - Staff Writer

August 3, 2007

ESCONDIDO, CALIFORNIA -- While Latino rights activists complain driver's license checkpoints conducted by the Escondido Police Department over the last year disproportionately affect poor and Latino drivers, a grass-roots community group says many Escondidans support the checkpoints because they improve traffic safety.

In June, the group, called Citizens of Escondido for Road Safety, submitted a letter of support for the checkpoints, with signatures from more than 400 Escondido residents, to the City Council. The group's leader, Patricia Bennett, a 60-year-old artist who lives on the city's southern edge, said this week that the group has since collected another 300 signatures and wants the Police Department to know that many residents do support its effort.

"You can't just listen to the whiners," Bennett said. "You've also got to listen to the people who are supportive."

Bennett formed the road safety group, which now has 37 members, about a year ago after a police officer told her the police had been receiving criticism about the checkpoints, she said. Then the group began collecting signatures.

"It's so that we could say, 'Here's concrete proof that people want this program, endorse this program,' " she said. "An unlicensed driver is an unsafe person to be on the road, because we have no proof even that they know our laws."

The police conduct the two-hour traffic stops, where they check for driver's licenses, registration, insurance and any criminal activity, at an unannounced location between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. usually at least once a month.

Bill Flores, a retired San Diego County assistant sheriff and spokesman for El Grupo, a coalition of area activist groups, said Friday that the checkpoints disproportionately affect poor and Latino drivers because they sometimes can't afford to maintain their vehicles or because illegal immigrants, many of whom are Latino, aren't allowed to have driver's licenses under California law.

This, in turn, sours the Police Department's relationship with the Latino community, he said.

Flores said he hasn't seen any hard evidence that driver's license checkpoints reduce crime or improve road safety.

However, last week police Chief Jim Maher reported that hit-and-run accidents are down 24 percent since the police began the checkpoint policy about a year ago. The police say the city normally has about 650 hit-and-run accidents annually.

Flores said Maher hasn't proven the decrease is a direct effect of the checkpoints.

Flores believes Bennett's group is just another anti-illegal immigration organization such as the Minutemen, which has become highly visible in North County during protests of day-laborer hiring sites and which some consider to be a racist organization.

"No matter what alias this (road safety) group has, we know who they are," Flores said. "They're anti-immigration, they're anti-Latino, and we know exactly how they feel, no matter what they call themselves."

In response to Flores' allegation, Bennett said she isn't racist, isn't a member of the Minutemen and that her group is only concerned about public safety.

Bennett is against illegal immigration, she said, and last year she publicly voiced support for the City Council's controversial law that would have prohibited landlords from renting to illegal immigrants.

"It is so unfair for him to say something like that while all I want is for people to obey the law," Bennett said. "It has nothing to do with any ethnic group. It's that there are people that choose to break the laws of America."

Among its activities, the road safety group always keeps an eye open for expired registration tags and inoperable vehicles around Escondido and then reports them to the city, she said.

The group's Spanish-speaking members also monitor Spanish-language radio stations. Bennett said the stations often announce the location of driver's license checkpoints that their listeners have reported, which she believes may be an attempt to help unlicensed drivers avoid the police but isn't illegal.

In April, Bennett sent a letter of complaint to one of these stations and to the state attorney general's office, she said.

Lt. Bob Benton, spokesman for the Police Department, said the traffic checkpoints don't target illegal immigrants or Latinos. He said he has received almost all positive comments from the public about the checkpoints, but that this is the first time he recalls the department receiving a signed letter of support for one its policies.

"Obviously, traffic safety is a concern to everyone," Benton said. "I'm glad to see we have a grass-roots group that's as concerned with traffic safety as we are."

-- Contact staff writer Paul Eakins at (760) 740-5420 or peakins@nctimes.com.

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