EDITORIAL SANCTUARY SETBACK L.A. HAS NO EXCUSE FOR LETTING UNLICENSED DRIVERS OFF THE TOW-TRUCK HOOK.

A little more than a week ago, the LAPD announced that it would stop seizing the cars of unlicensed drivers, based on the flimsiest legal pretext -- a two-year-old, largely irrelevant court ruling.

The real reason, of course, was political.

In these parts, many unlicensed -- and, thus, untrained and uninsured -- drivers are illegal immigrants. And since immigration activists have been unable to persuade Sacramento to provide driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, they hoped to achieve essentially the same end by getting the Los Angeles Police Department to stop vigorously enforcing the law.

But now, scarcely a week later, their legal pretext has been blown out of the water. City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo's office has completed its review of a U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals 2005 ruling, concluding that it does not preclude police from impounding unlicensed drivers' cars.

No surprise there.

That case, Miranda v. City Cornelius, had to do with a man whose car was seized from his own driveway. The court ruled the impoundment to be needlessly punitive, and indeed it was, seeing that the car was on its owner's own property, and public safety was not endangered.

That is decidedly not the case for unlicensed drivers whose presence on our freeways puts lives at risk and increases insurance rates for the rest of us. Every other major police force in the state figured that out two years ago, and carried on with their normal impound policies.

But in L.A., political motivations have a way of trumping sound policy.

City Councilman Jose Huizar and others pressured the LAPD to stop impounding cars, ostensibly until they could get some clarification on the law, and Chief William Bratton obliged.

Well, the clarification has arrived: The city's top lawyer has determined that L.A. can continue protecting its citizens by taking unlicensed drivers' cars off the road.

Perhaps having learned too well just how small-minded L.A.'s leadership is, Bratton first said he wouldn't reverse the moratorium -- but then changed his mind in the face of the reality of the situation.

Still, the episode shows how little reason plays in the decision-making processes at City Hall. But with Delgadillo's clarification, there's no longer any excuse for maintaining the moratorium. The only motivation for letting unlicensed drivers off the hook is to make L.A. a "sanctuary city," where breaking immigration laws carries no consequences whatsoever.

There are, to be sure, good reasons for giving driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. Chief among them is it would get potentially millions of drivers who are already on our roads properly trained, identified and licensed.

Circumventing the law, however, and giving unlicensed drivers what amounts to a free pass, doesn't achieve any of these ends. It only rewards lawlessness, needlessly puts lives at risk and further adds to L.A.'s dreadful traffic congestion.

It's a shame that city leaders, so committed to making L.A. a "sanctuary" city, would go to such lengths, especially when such a policy in this case endangers its residents' safety.