District of Columbia Council members deserve kudos for voting to temporarily repeal a controversial law allowing police officers to arrest, handcuff and throw otherwise law-abiding citizens in jail for driving with expired vehicle registrations. The fact that the council has known about this outrageous practice for years and only considered it an “emergency” when Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., objected on behalf of one of his constituents does not negate that fact. Council members should now take the next step and make the 90-day repeal permanent.
Lon Anderson, managing director of public and government affairs at AAA Mid-Atlantic, told The Washington Examiner that “hundreds” of people have been arrested, fingerprinted and jailed in D.C. merely for driving with dead plates. It was AAA who forwarded the letter to Webb from an active duty naval officer headed for a yearlong deployment in Afghanistan who was arrested and held for three hours in the 2nd District lockup because he had moved and never received his vehicle registration renewal notice. Because of that arrest, his security clearance in now in jeopardy.
