Judge puts brake on Sidran's use of car-impoundment law

In a ruling that puts Seattle's politically and racially charged vehicle-impoundment law in jeopardy, a King County Superior Court judge has ordered that before police officers seize a vehicle, they must first try to find someone to drive it away.

THE ISSUE

A judge has ruled that police must try to find someone to drive a car away before seizing it.

City officials, saying the ruling makes the law unenforceable, say they'll appeal.

For more background, see the P-I special report, Tow Truck Justice.

City Attorney Mark Sidran said he plans to appeal the ruling, signed yesterday by Judge Michael Trickey. If upheld by the state Court of Appeals, Sidran said it would essentially render the law unenforceable.

Under the law, police can impound the cars of people driving without licenses. Critics say it unfairly targets minorities and the poor because many license suspensions are the result of unpaid tickets.

Sidran, who has stopped prosecuting many cases involving driving without a license, said that if the ruling stands he'd have to resume sending people to jail for violations.

"We'd be going back to business as usual, which means locking people up instead of impounding cars," he said.

Officers will not have to change their practices unless the ruling is upheld; Sidran said an appeal could take a year to be decided.

Sidran, a candidate for mayor, has strongly backed the law, saying the threat of impoundment keeps unlicensed drivers off the road, and impounding cars is preferable to jailing people who drive with suspended licenses.

But under the ruling, police would have to take "reasonable" steps to find a friend or a relative of the driver to drive the car away before it could be impounded. Sidran argues that would leave drivers little incentive to regain their licenses.

The ruling came as Sidran was about to issue a report to City Council members, saying jail bookings for license violations were 37 percent lower last year than in 1998.

Sidran's report also shows that the racial disproportionality -- which caused much of the criticism of the law -- seems to be easing. Whereas more blacks than whites were booked for driving with a suspended license in 1998 and 1999, Sidran said more whites than blacks were booked on the charges last year.

Sidran said such bookings against blacks have dropped by almost half between 1998 and 2000 because a number of programs in minority communities have begun doing more to help drivers become relicensed.

At the same time, he said, "the word is out on the street that if you drive without a license, you're going to get your car impounded."

Nevertheless, critics said blacks were still disproportionately booked for driving with suspended licenses last year, representing about 42 percent of the cases, despite making up about 8 percent of the city's population.

Critics such as Seattle/King County public defender Lisa Daugaard and City Councilman Nick Licata seized on the ruling, saying the law violates the rights of the poor.

"It establishes that there are substantial legal concerns about the city's policies," Daugaard said.

Yesterday's ruling involved five separate cases, in which drivers with suspended licenses had their cars impounded. Daugaard said that in each case, someone was either at the scene of the traffic stop or nearby and could have driven the car away.

P-I reporter Kery Murakami can be reached at 206-448-8029 or kerymurakami@seattlepi.com

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