LITTER LAW SHOULD FIT THE CRIME.

Byline: MARIEL GARZA

I learned at a young age that littering is an extremely bad thing, thanks to Saturday morning TV spots by Woodsy Owl and the Crying Indian. Also that pollution was somehow to blame for the marginalization of Native Americans.

So it's probably not a surprise that as an adult, I developed an intense dislike for littering and litterbugs. It is one of the things that most disappoints me about my own species - that we toss anything, anywhere with no regard of its consequences: Beer bottles in the street, old mattresses on the corner, hundreds of gallons of oil in the ocean.

So when the Los Angeles City Council voted the other day to punish the worst trash dumpers in the city by taking away their cars, a small, mean part of me thought it was not nearly harsh enough. (``String them up by their toes and let squirrels nibble on their soft parts,'' is what the creepy part of my mind said. ``Ha ha ha!'') But I know that would be wrong.

Then the rational part of me read the ordinance, which allows the city to seize the car of someone arrested on suspicion of illegal dumping or if police have probable cause that the dumping occurred. Just arrested. The council passed two other ordinances at the same time that punish people suspected of engaging in prostitution and illegal street racing, also by seizing their cars.

Wait, my rational side said. This seems to have an inherently constitutional wrongness. I also learned as a child, again probably from TV, that in this great country a person is considered innocent until a jury of peers decides otherwise. Until then, a person can't be punished by the state, only by reporters who are free to chase the subject down with TV cameras, go through his or her trash and ask impertinent questions.

But more importantly, this is Los Angeles.

If you lose your car in the parking-space hell of San Francisco, it's almost a relief. (I base this on actual experience.) You take someone's car away here, and you very well could be taking away their livelihood as well. In this bad economy, that borders on institutionalized evil, and a punishment that doesn't fit the crime.

In this town, it's cruel and unusual punishment to be left a pedestrian.

Concerned about this, I asked Liz Schroeder, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, whether anyone else has a problem with the laws. She did, saying the ACLU finds the ordinances questionable because of the lack of due process and because taking someone's car seems way out of proportion to the crime.

However, the car-seizing law (made popular by the U.S. government during its zero-tolerance drug wars) has been challenged, she said, and withstood the legal test when Oakland first adopted one five years ago to go after prostitution and drug dealing.

That won't mean much to the mom who loses her minivan for as long as a month because her lecherous husband was allegedly soliciting prostitutes.

According to the City Attorney's Office, once a car is seized, it is not automatically returned if the person is acquitted or the criminal charges are dropped. A person has to file a claim and a civil court judge decides if the seizure was warranted. (For the record, a city attorney spokesman said that in the case of cars being owned by third parties, the city would be lenient on car returns.)

That means someone found innocent of the crime could still suffer punishment from the loss of a car and hundreds of dollars in impound fees ($93 to tow and $25 a day for impound storage).

This is fair?

Of course people who engage in illegal dumping, illegal sexual activity and illegal street racing must be punished for breaking the law. Call me radical, but I think it should happen after a person has been found guilty.

And the punishment should fit the crime.

I doubt this ordinance is likely to have immediate profound effects on our society, based on past lackluster enforcement of car seizures against johns. But it should give all of us pause to think about how little things like an ordinance meant to clean up a city can weaken the building blocks of our imperfect but lovable country.