CA-Democratic state Assemblyman Michael Allen seeks to change law which allow the police to use DUI checkpoints to seize cars.

SACRAMENTO, CA - A week after Nora Ramos gave birth by Caesarean section, she found herself walking five miles home with her husband and four children.

On their way from the hospital in Modesto, the family had been stopped at a DUI checkpoint. Ramos' husband, who had been driving because his wife was dizzy from morphine, did not have a license, and police impounded their car.

That was four years ago. Today, Ramos is joining civil liberties groups and those advocating for minority rights, who say dozens of sobriety checkpoints throughout California have been used to generate impoundment fees rather than arrest drunken drivers.

They support a proposed law from Democratic state Assemblyman Michael Allen that aims to restrict the inspections to their intended purpose of stopping drunken driving.

"Yes, I understand, if they are drunk drivers, grab them, throw them in jail," said Ramos, who is 33. "But what about people who have nothing to do with that?"

Allen, from Santa Rosa, said cities and police have strayed from the original mission of checkpoints, increasingly using them to seize vehicles.

Impoundments increased 53 percent statewide between 2007 and 2009, according to his bill, AB1389. It says that in many cities, the ratio of impoundments to DUI arrests is 20 to 1.

Jeannette Zanipatin, an attorney with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, says "It's a way for them to generate revenue, easy revenue that goes unchallenged."

"DUI checkpoints are exclusively about safety," the association's president, David L. Maggard, Jr., said in an e-mail.

Allen said that some cities do treat the checkpoints as a way to raise revenue but that his priority is the effect on drivers. A 2005 federal court case prohibits officers from confiscating vehicles if they can be moved to a safe place or picked up by a licensed driver, such as a relative.


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