Towing Vehicles of Homeless Part of Bigger Societal Issue

Every day police officers must make difficult decisions. Always they must keep in mind public safety and the greater good. A great amount of debate occurred about the actions of a Sacramento Police Department traffic officer who ordered the towing of a homeless woman’s car on Friday, February 13. To bystanders and many readers of the story in the Sacramento Bee, the officer’s actions were considered “heartless,” as one commented. The purpose of this blog posting is to tell the rest of the story…

It is unfortunate that Deanna Van Slate’s personal circumstances forced her to live in her vehicle. In today’s economy, more people can probably empathize or even fear her circumstances than ever before. In a downward spiral including joblessness, her inability to pay for auto insurance led to her expired vehicle registration which caught the eye of the traffic officer in downtown Sacramento. The fact that she was driving her vehicle on city streets while uninsured was the tipping point that led to Van Slate’s vehicle being impounded.

It appeared to witnesses that Van Slate was simply ousted from her vehicle with her worldly possessions dumped on the sidewalk on a rainy day. What was not made clear in the original story was that the officer did in fact ask multiple times to assist Van Slate with calling friends and relatives to pick her up, as well as helping to move her belongings out of the rain. These are some of the ways officers are compassionate even while in an enforcement role.

Unfortunately, all of these circumstances do not change the fact that there is a serious and growing problem with uninsured motorists, and the officer took necessary action as dictated by his primary responsibility to the public. With Sacramento’s dismal traffic statistics, it is incumbent on Sacramento Police traffic officers to take their jobs seriously. Sacramento has the worst ranking in California for fatal and injury collisions based on average population. Sacramento also has ranked worst among California cities with populations over 250,000 in alcohol-involved collisions, as well as speed-related fatal and injury collisions.

The sentiments of readers who called to complain about the towing of Van Slate’s car are understandable. However, we doubt that anyone would want to find themselves in a collision with an uninsured motorist. The Sacramento Bee’s own recent article on February 6 (Road hazard: uninsured driver rates climb), stated that the numbers of uninsured motorists are rising nationwide. This also means that the frustration and expense incurred by insured motorists who find themselves in accidents with the uninsured can also be expected to rise.

According to the Insurance Research Council cited in the article, rising unemployment rates correlate to the rise in uninsured motorists (3 million more uninsured motorists than five years ago). More insured motorists in collisions with uninsured will be picking up the tab for auto repair, injuries and court costs after accidents. This also means police officers everywhere are going to increasingly be faced with difficult situations like the one on Friday, and will have to wrestle with the aftermath of negative public opinion in order to protect all of the drivers on the road.

It is easy to be upset about stories like Van Slate’s. Those that work with the homeless and unemployed see their difficult circumstances every day. Rather than judge those that are sworn to uphold the law and protect the greater population, energy would be well-spent by all of us in working to assist those that are less fortunate than ourselves. According to the Bee, many people came forward to assist Van Slate, which is laudable, but she is just one, out of many homeless, that needs the community’s help to find housing and jobs.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 19th, 2009 at 6:18 pm and is filed under Editorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.