Maywood’s Mean Money Machine

Any working mother can envision herself in the stressful situation Flor Cervantes faced recently. She finished her shift at a fast-food restaurant and picked up her two children at a day-care center in Montebello. As she hurried home to South Gate, it was hot and the kids were restless. To avoid congestion on the Long Beach Freeway, Cervantes took Slauson Avenue through the city of Maywood. There, she literally came to a roadblock and fell victim to Maywood’s draconian policy of holding cars hostage.

Cervantes -- a former preschool teacher in Mexico -- is an illegal immigrant with no California driver’s license. Like many other cities, Maywood not only cites such drivers but impounds their cars. But Maywood police officers take an aggressive approach in looking for cars to impound. They routinely set up roadblocks to catch unlicensed drivers. The vehicles are held the maximum time allowed by state law, 30 days, so the fines and fees add up to hundreds, even thousands, of dollars.

That’s what happened to the 12-year-old Dodge minivan that Cervantes was driving in May when she was stopped at one of Maywood’s “routine” Friday afternoon traffic checkpoints.

The roadblock created a sizable traffic jam, even by L.A. standards. Cars, trucks and MTA buses were backed up two blocks in one direction and half a mile in the other, into the City of Commerce. A Maywood police officer blocked each of the four traffic lanes, stopping every motorist and asking to see a driver’s license. Those who didn’t have one were waved to a side street, where a dozen more police officers were waiting.

Also stationed there were six tow trucks to haul cars away. The trucks belong to Maywood Club Tow, which has the contract to handle Maywood’s lucrative impound business. Maywood Club Tow executives have not returned phone calls requesting an interview to discuss how much they make off the impounds, but Maywood officials told me their town (just over one square mile, population 28,000) has earned about $1 million over the last 3 1/2 years from its share of the fees and fines.

Cervantes did not realize why traffic was slow ahead of her, although a large electronic sign between traffic lanes was flashing an alert, in English, that a traffic safety checkpoint lay ahead. A few drivers who understood the sign turned back, only to be intercepted by Maywood motorcycle cops, who cited them for making illegal U-turns.

When Cervantes got to the head of her lane, she admitted she did not have a license. She was pulled over to a side street, where she asked another officer if he could just cite her for not having a license and not impound the vehicle. Her husband needed the minivan to get to his upholstering job in Gardena. She also pointed to her children in the back seat, but the officer refused.

“I was already so ashamed,” she said later, “and he made me feel as if I had committed some terrible crime.”

Cervantes stepped out of the minivan and unloaded everything she could from the vehicle onto two baby strollers. She used one for 2-year-old Benjie and had 4-year-old Brian push the other as they made their way to a nearby bus stop. Brian began to cry, asking why the police had taken his father’s “new” car.

Maywood Police Chief Bruce Leflar wasn’t there that hot afternoon, as I was. But he probably would have told Brian his officers were only trying to keep the streets of Maywood safe.

Each month, more than 800,000 vehicles use the city’s two main thoroughfares, Slauson Avenue and Atlantic Boulevard, according to a letter the chief recently wrote to a state legislator who questioned the use of roadblocks at rush hour.

Last year, Maywood police impounded more than 1,800 cars at such roadblocks, intercepted seven drunk drivers and arrested eight other suspects, Leflar wrote, making the traffic checkpoints “a success.”

Financially speaking, yes. Maywood is a poor city with an annual budget of between $8 million and $9 million, so the roughly $250,000 a year it gets from the release, or resale, of impounded cars is not chump change.

But politically, the roadblocks are a public-relations disaster. For every immigrant, such as Cervantes, who assumes the stops are another burden that comes with living in the U.S. illegally, there is an angry citizen in Maywood or a nearby city who finds them not only an inconvenience but insulting to the majority of licensed drivers.

Two grass-roots organizations in the area have begun campaigns to abolish the roadblocks, and I’ll discuss the statewide ramifications of their efforts in my next column.

But any change in Maywood’s policy will be too late for Cervantes. Her husband wanted to reclaim the minivan he bought for $2,000, even though it would cost $1,100 in fines and impound fees. But by the time he scraped the money together by postponing a rent payment, the car had been sold at auction.

“Maybe it’s for the best,” Cervantes sadly told me. “I really didn’t want to miss our rent payment.”

Frank del Olmo is associate editor of The Times.