AN ANTI-CRIME MISSION

THE MONTHLY community meeting at San Francisco's Mission Police Station
would seem to be the friendliest forum imaginable for Mayor Willie Brown's
plan to confiscate cars allegedly used during the solicitation of
prostitutes or drugs.

The attendees are the residents who sweep the needles left by drug addicts,
who watch with disgust as prostitutes walk up and down Capp Street as if
they own the place and who sneer at the passing vehicles of those who would
use their neighborhood for drive-through thrills.

These Mission District residents are mad, rightly so, and they are
involved. And few of the 40 in attendance at Tuesday night's monthly
meeting dissented when resident Frank Morales said "99 percent of us''
support the car-seizure plan.

Yet even in that forum, representatives of the mayor's office, city
attorney's staff and police officers encountered skepticism from several
residents who asked the right questions and expressed more than a little
worry about the responses. A paraphrase of some of the telling exchanges:

Are you saying that people could lose their cars in civil court even if
they are never charged with any crime or are acquitted in a criminal court?
The answer is yes.

People of color are singled out for prosecution of other laws. Why should
we believe that this law will be any different? "Trust us, this is San
Francisco'' was the upshot of the response from the mayor's office and
police. Captain Gregory Suhr, who is white, said the "model case'' would
involve a "non person of color from the Peninsula in a luxury car.''

Why don't you spend this money arresting people and putting them in jail?
Suhr compared the futility of a revolving-door judicial system -- with its
small fines for drug possession and solicitation -- to "tossing a deck
chair off the Titanic.''

It would be impossible for anyone with any degree of humanity to leave that
meeting without sharing the residents' outrage at the desecration of the
Mission by outsiders who regard it as a hangout for sex and drugs. But it
was also maddening to think that politicians such as the mayor would sell
them out with a "solution'' that may not even pass constitutional muster.
The Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution explicitly protects Americans
against "unreasonable searches and seizures'' of their "houses, papers and
effects.'' The confiscation of a $40,000 automobile from a suspect in a
crime that carries a $100 fine would seem to fit that definition.

And, yes, the history of forfeiture laws in this country -- particularly
those enacted for the "war on drugs'' -- hardly suggests a benign or
colorblind pattern of enforcement. Just ask Willie Jones, an
African-American landscaper who was targeted for a luggage search because
he paid cash for an airline ticket. Police found no drugs, but a police dog
detected traces of drugs on the $9,600 he was carrying. He was never
convicted of any crime, but it took him two years of lawsuits to get his
money back.

The danger of giving the government too much power, of leapfrogging the
criminal courts for prosecution of crimes, is very real.

Congress, recognizing the many excesses of forfeiture laws, is moving
forward with legislation to severely restrain such federal authority to
seize property.

The Constitution leaves Mayor Brown and District Attorney Terence Hallinan
with plenty of ways to help the Mission. Deploy more officers. Prosecute
more cases. Raise the fines and sentences. Throw the book at repeat
offenders. They can and should do it with the legal authority they already
possess.