Drunk Driver Plays Name Game and Slips Through the Justice System

The (immense) value of a lie.

You’d be surprised how a simple trick like giving a phony name can help a drunk driver, a thief, a drug pusher or any manner of mid-level criminal escape full punishment.

It’s the modern budget-tight story: too much crime, too few cops, too much paperwork. It’s a boon to criminals who live in marginal circumstances and carry no identification, or phony identification.

Cops and prosecutors say it’s a daily headache.

Take a drunk-driving arrest recently in Linda Vista. The guy gives his name as Jose Quezada Estrada, 27, and is hauled off to County Jail on a misdemeanor charge.

A woman in the neighborhood flags down some beat cops and pleads with them to do something. She says the guy has been convicted of drunk driving under different names and yet keeps returning to the streets.

Because the woman’s plea was so emotional, one of the cops takes time to use a fingerprint system called Cal I.D. to check out her information. It’s a great system if there are time and personnel to use it, which often there aren’t.

The cop who checked says he found that Jose Quezada Estrada has been convicted of drunk driving four times in the past three years--under the names Jose Roberto Sandoval, Jose Sandoval Lopez and Jose Pedroza Sandoval.

The priors mean the current charge can be boosted from misdemeanor to felony. That could mean several years in state prison rather than a few months in jail.

Unfortunately, the paperwork with the priors and the aliases didn’t get to the city attorney.

The sergeant who sent the case over to the city attorney can’t explain to me how that happened. He growls that he’s got too much paperwork, too many cases.

At a bail hearing, the judge sees only the current misdemeanor charge, not the prior convictions, and releases the defendant on his promise to appear.

The defendant fails to appear for arraignment and a warrant for his arrest is issued, doubtless to be filed away with the county’s other 600,000 unserved warrants.

A city prosecutor assures me that the defendant will probably be picked up again someday for something else and be slapped with an additional felony or two.

Presuming, of course, that he’s run out of aliases.

Begging for Loans

Here and there.

* Hedi Madani, owner of the new Hedi’s restaurant in the Gaslamp Quarter, swears he saw a panhandler repay a dollar to an outdoor diner who had given him a buck on a previous occasion.

* How did the mega-card room proposal being fronted by Roger Hedgecock and Al Zennedjian get fast-tracked to the City Council without the usual committee hearing?

Councilman Bob Filner, chairman of the Public Services and Safety Committee, arranged for the proposal to bypass his committee and go straight to the council.

For the record: Janette Zennedjian, Al’s daughter, contributed $500 to Filner’s congressional campaign. She lives in El Cajon, which is not part of the congressional district Filner is seeking to represent.

* How vigorous was Hedgecock in lobbying City Council on behalf of the card room proposal?

He pitched Councilwoman Valerie Stallings while the two were jogging in Mission Beach.

* Betty Wilson, ex-wife of Gov. Pete Wilson, was married Thursday to Bernard Hosie.

He was a schoolmaster in his native Australia and is now a consultant to the San Diego-based Foundation for the People of the South Pacific. She recently retired from selling real estate.

The couple will live in La Jolla.

* An attorney for Associated General Contractors of America has sent a tough letter to the San Diego City Council warning of legal action if Councilman George Stevens leads any more demonstrations onto work sites.

Stevens led a protest at a street repair site in Skyline to draw attention to the lack of black workers. He’s unfazed by the letter from the San Diego firm of Procopio, Cory, Hargreaves & Savitch:

“I’ll continue to do what is necessary to get equity in hiring in city projects.”

Riot Wear

San Diego County cops, firefighters and National Guardsmen (and others) who went to Los Angeles when it was burning are now sporting T-shirts:

“L.A. Riot ’92. We Took the Bang Out of the Gang.”