Features

A little over a month after Oakland city officials were blamed for allowing a sideshow-abatement state law to lapse, the California legislature is quietly moving to reinstate the law on an “urgency” basis. 

Oakland’s inaction and the legislature’s fast-track action may mean that California’s five year experiment in suspending due process to permit the seizure of cars, aimed at curbing sideshows, could become a permanent part of state law without state officials or the public ever learning how it worked—or did not work—in Oakland. 

The first hearing on SB67, the sideshow car seizure law re-enactment bill introduced by State Senator Don Perata (D-Oakland) in mid-January, will be held on March 27 in Sacramento by the Public Safety Committee of the State Senate. 

Under the original ordinance that SB67 seeks to renew, SB1489, passed in 2002, cities can seize vehicles and hold them for a mandatory 30 day period without a prior hearing, and solely on the word of a police officer that the vehicle was being used in a “speed contest,” “reckless driving,” or an “exhibition of speed.” While no legal definition of sideshows existed at the time, SB1489 was specifically aimed at Oakland’s sideshows. 

The original law contained a sunset provision, causing it to expire on January 1st of this year. An Oakland Tribune article published last month said that Oakland “failed last year to document the law’s success in time to renew it.” 

Oakland Police Chief Wayne Tucker says that the sideshow car seizure law is necessary, both for the state and for Oakland. 

“We should not lose the ability to confiscate cars that are engaging in sideshows,” Tucker said in an interview this week. “That’s a huge deterrent.” 

And a spokesperson in the office of Senator Perata said that Oakland City Council Public Safety Committee Chairperson Larry Reid had contacted the Senator’s office requesting reinstatement of the bill, and the Oakland Police Department provided their office with information supporting its reinstatement. 

“It was so successful,” Perata Public Information Officer Alicia Trust said, “the City of Oakland asked us to do it again.” 

Trust said that Perata’s office has not received any communication in opposition to the reinstatement of the bill, and urged anyone with such views to forward their positions to Perata. 

There is opposition in Oakland to the sideshow car seizure bill, and some local activists and public officials are concerned that there has been no public review of the five-year law in Oakland, at which the original law was aimed. 

“I’m absolutely concerned that there are no hearings planned for Oakland,” Peralta Community College District Trustee Linda Handy said by telephone. Handy, who represents one of the East Oakland flatland areas that has been designated a “sideshow zone” by Oakland police, said that “if this was has been effective in doing what it says it was supposed to do, then substantial detail should be available to support its reauthorization. Tell us how it has reduced crime in our community.” 

Handy said her concern is that the sideshow car seizure law is “not being used in the manner in which it was intended,” causing “a direct impact on young African-American males, contributing to their disproportionate contact with the police. This bill has led to racial profiling. It has given the police carte blanche to ignore the civil rights of these young people.” 

And Rashidah Grinage, a longtime Oakland activist with PUEBLO organization who regularly monitors Oakland police activities, agreed, saying that “I don’t think the city has provided information about the efficacy of the law.” She said there was a pattern in similar legislation in the past dealing directly with Oakland’s crime problems, mentioning Oakland’s anti-loitering ordinance, passed in 2003. 

“It was supposed to stop crime by getting criminals off the streets and making our streets safe,” Grinage said. But once it was passed, after much fanfare, she added that “that’s the last we heard about it. The city never documented the effects. Nobody said a word about it since. Once they pass something, they take their eye off the ball. Should it be modified? Should it be scrapped? Nobody knows. It’s just nuts.” 

Grinage said Oakland’s anti-loitering ordinance quietly died by a sunset provision, without a public discussion. 

The sideshow seizure bill has led to a number of widely-publicized abuses by Oakland police. In 2005, Oakland officers seized the van being driven by a 41 year old Oakland resident, Eugene Davis, on an allegation that Davis was playing his car stereo too loud, one of Oakland’s definitions of a “sideshow violation.” 

Davis turned out to be a basketball coach who was driving two of his players home from a game. Both he and the two players were left on an Oakland street to figure out how to get home while his van was towed away. 

Talking about the towing and storage and ticket fees that resulted, Davis later said, “basically, I got jacked.” 

Davis was able to get the towing and storage fees rescinded after he went public about the incident, and an embarassed Chief Tucker intervened and publicly apologized to him. But the incident remains a black eye on the department’s implementation of the law. 

And a little over a year later, the Oakland Tribune reported an even more serious event, when two Sacramento Latino teenagers were shot, one of them critically, by rival gang members after the teenagers’ car was towed by Oakland police for an alleged sideshow offense and the driver and occupants were left by police on a late night, East Oakland street to try to find their way out.