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With no opposition and support from the Oakland Police Department and the offices of Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums and Oakland City Council Public Safety Chairperson Larry Reid, the California State Senate Public Safety Committee unanimously approved this week a bill that would reinstate the 30-day confiscation of cars who police say are involved in Oakland sideshows. 

One committee member, Sen. Gilbert Cedillo (D-Los Angeles) said that the penalties should be more severe. Citing the fact that police can currently impound a car for 30 days if it is driven by an illegal immigrant, Cedillo said, “I’m not sure 30 days is appropriate for the sort of offenses described” in Perata’s sideshow car impoundment bill. “Maybe it should be a total seizure.” 

While some Oakland activists and public officials have expressed opposition to the sideshow car seizure law, none came to the Senate Public Safety Committee hearing to express it. Perata’s office has said that they have received no correspondence in opposition to the bill. 

Existing California law allows California police to seize the cars driven in a “motor vehicle speed contest” and hold them for 30 days, without a hearing and solely on the word of the police officer that the car was involved in a street race, with the registered owner of the vehicle responsible for the towing and storage fees. 

The car owners can challenge the seizure and get their cars back early and without charges if they can prove they were not responsible for the car being in the street race, when the hearings are held before hearing officers who are employees of the cities who confiscated the cars, rather than before state-paid judges in civil or criminal courts. 

In 2002, under a bill sponsored by State Senator Don Perata (D-Oakland), the 30-day car impoundment law was expanded to include “reckless driving on a highway” and “reckless driving in an offstreet parking lot,” offenses which both Perata and Oakland police and city officials said was designed to apply to Oakland’s illegal street sideshows. 

Perata’s 2002 bill had a five-year “sunset” provision attached, with Oakland officials required to come back to the Legislature during the 2006 session to justify its continued use if they wanted it to be extended beyond the scheduled January 1, 2007 ending date for its application to sideshow activities. But both Oakland officials and Senator Perata’s office failed to renew the sideshow car confiscation provisions in 2006, and they lapsed. In January, Perata introduced new legislation, SB67, to renew the provisions, asking that the law be reinstated on an “urgency basis” “in order to protect the public from the consequences of reckless driving on a highway or in an off-street parking facility and exhibitions of speed on a highway at the earliest possible time.” 

Because the bill is being moved on an expedited urgency basis, a two-thirds vote is required for passage in both the Senate and the Assembly. 

On Tuesday, OPD Captain David Kozicki, who oversaw Oakland’s sideshow crackdown for most of its years, told Senate Public Safety Committee members that the renewal of the law was necessary as a deterrent. “The law hasn’t been used that much in Oakland,” Kozicki said. “Maybe 25 times since it was passed. But people know that the law is there, and that stops many of them from participating in sideshows in Oakland.” While Kozicki said that the sideshow problem “hasn’t been significant in Oakland lately,” he cited an incident a week ago in Oakland where he witnessed a driver “spinning his car in the intersection of Foothill and Seminary while he was standing on the running board steering and the passenger was stepping on the gas. A small group of people were on the sidewalk, watching.” Kozicki said that the van had already been impounded by Oakland police a week before that, but police could not hold the vehicle because the sideshow car seizure law had expired. “We could have taken the vehicle off the street if the law had been in effect,” Kozicki said. 

Jennifer Thompson, who said she was appearing on behalf of the administration of Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums, said in a brief, one-line statement that Dellums supported SB67 “because he believes it has a great deterrent effect.” 

Also speaking in behalf of Perata’s SB67 was 2002 Skyline High School graduate Sean Conner, former student body president at Sheldon Jackson College in Sitka, Alaska, who said that although he was away at college he was aware of the sideshow problem in Oakland, linking sideshows to drug use and sexual assaults. “Homicides have resulted, as well.” 

Oakland City Council Public Safety Chairperson Larry Reid, a vocal opponent of sideshows and a supporter of Perata’s original 2002 bill, was represented at the hearing by his chief of staff, who read a letter from Reid urging senators to pass the renewal bill. 

The bill now goes to the Senate Appropriations Committee, where it is scheduled for an April 16 hearing. If passed, the bill will go to the full Senate and then to the Assembly