TRI In The News
D.C. Council Finally Decriminalizes Forgetfulness
10/20/2011
TRI IN THE NEWS: D.C. COUNCIL FINALLY DECRIMINALIZES FORGETFULNESS
From The Washington Examiner
Original article available here.
District of Columbia Council members deserve kudos for voting to temporarily repeal a controversial law allowing police officers to arrest, handcuff and throw otherwise law-abiding citizens in jail for driving with expired vehicle registrations.
The fact that the council has known about this outrageous practice for years and only considered it an "emergency" when Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., objected on behalf of one of his constituents does not negate that fact. Council members should now take the next step and make the 90-day repeal permanent.
Lon Anderson, managing director of public and government affairs at AAA Mid-Atlantic, told The Washington Examiner that "hundreds" of people have been arrested, fingerprinted and jailed in D.C. merely for driving with dead plates. It was AAA who forwarded the letter to Webb from an active duty naval officer headed for a yearlong deployment in Afghanistan who was arrested and held for three hours in the 2nd District lockup because he had moved and never received his vehicle registration renewal notice. Because of that arrest, his security clearance in now in jeopardy.
In another particularly egregious case, Anderson told us that another young father who had just returned from a business trip to Europe was arrested and handcuffed because he forgot to renew his plates. His 6-month-old baby, who was riding in the back seat, was sent to the D.C. Child and Family Services Agency.
Although Maryland and Virginia do not arrest motorists for driving with expired registrations, they also criminalize individuals for minor infractions. In Maryland, a grandmother was jailed for months this summer for bouncing a rent check. In Virginia, the Rutherford Institute is appealing the guilty verdict of Philip Cobbs, who was arrested in July for possession by a heavily-armed SWAT team that swarmed his property without a warrant after a military surveillance helicopter spotted two marijuana plants entangled among the limbs of a fallen oak tree on his 39-acre Albemarle County farm.
D.C.'s temporary law allows for impoundment of unregistered vehicles, basically putting the car -- not the driver -- in jail. This punishment is far more suited to the "crime" than locking people up in jail. Police union Chairman Kristopher Baumann claims that the old law was a "valuable tool for tracking down criminals," and it may have been. But over the years, it also ensnared too many people whose only crime was forgetfulness.
