Car Seized by Officers : Zero Sympathy for One Young Driver

One minute on Saturday, 23-year-old Brooke Betz of Yorba Linda and three of his friends were whisking through the streets of Santa Ana in his Volkswagen Rabbit convertible, on their way to a party in Malibu.

Not more than 10 minutes later, one of the young men was in police custody, Betz’s car was being seized by federal officers and Betz and his two remaining friends were left standing at the corner of Bristol and 1st streets--”not the best place to be,” Betz said, “for three . . . guys from Yorba Linda with suntans and fluorescent shorts.”

Maybe not, but that area of Santa Ana is where one of Betz’s friends decided to stop and buy “about 2 1/2 grams of pot, or about three joints worth,” Betz said Monday.

In doing so, the four ran up against the new “zero tolerance” drug drive, a local and federal operation in which property from both suspected drug sellers and buyers is seized. In certain instances--as in Betz’s case, federal officers said--the law allows officials to impound the cars in which drug buyers are riding.

‘My Rights Were Violated’

“The officer just drove my car away,” Betz said Monday at his girlfriend’s apartment in Newport Beach. “I got no receipt for my car, he didn’t tell me where it was going or what law was involved in taking the car. . . . I know my rights were violated. . . . As far as I know, I’ll never get my car back.”

But John King, a special agent with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the agency that seized the car, said Betz was given the top copy of a three-copy receipt before the car was driven away. The agency is not legally bound to issue receipts when a car is seized, he said, “but it’s just good, common practice.”

For Betz, a full-time student at Orange Coast College and a mechanic who repairs Ferraris, the weekend’s ordeal began Saturday about 12:30 p.m., when the four drove to Bristol and 1st streets, just off Walnut Street.

There, Betz said, one of the young men “got out of the car and purchased the pot” from a dealer standing on the corner, a misdemeanor offense. The friends then proceeded in Betz’s car down Bristol, only to be stopped two blocks away by a squad car from the Santa Ana Police Department.

“They had all of us get out of the car,” Betz recalled. “They took our names down on a white card. Then they asked me to empty my pockets.”

Betz recalled that when he pulled his car keys out, an officer asked, “Are these the keys to the car?” then took them.

“He (the officer) said to me then, ‘Here is the bad news: We’re going to take your car.’

“I said, ‘How can you do that?’ And he (the officer) just said, ‘We can.’ I said, ‘What’s the law on that? What’s the code on that?’ He didn’t answer the question, but he just mumbled something about zero tolerance.”

After the car was driven away, Betz said he and his three friends headed on foot to a police station, where they inquired about their friend and about Betz’s impounded car. “No one would tell me anything,” he said.

It was 5 p.m. before Betz finally returned home to Yorba Linda, where he spent Saturday and most of the last two days contemplating what happened.

“I’m wondering what they are going to do next. . . . If you have marijuana in your house and they come to your house, are they going to confiscate your house? . . . I can’t believe this is a law and that it’s legal.”

While he has little faith he will get back his car, which is now impounded on a lot at 6th and Bristol streets, Betz is talking of hiring an attorney to ensure that, if his rights were violated, the situation will be redressed.

As for buying drugs, or allowing someone riding in his car to buy drugs, Betz has this to say: “If that’s the position it puts me in, buying drugs, I’ll never buy drugs again.”