Another Turn in Ferrari Saga

Cue creepy music. It is time for another episode of The F-Files!

From The Los Angeles Times:

Sheriff's officials investigating the crash of a Ferrari in Malibu last month are asking how a small private transit company could create its own police department and allegedly hand out law enforcement identification to civilians, including the car's owner.

According to Yosef Maiwandi, it wasn't as difficult as you might think.

The San Gabriel Valley Transit Authority is a tiny, privately run organization that provides bus rides to disabled people and senior citizens. It operates out of an auto repair shop.

Maiwandi is the owner of Homer's Auto Service in Monrovia and is also one of three San Gabriel Valley Transit Authority commissioners.

Maiwandi said he started the nonprofit organization after receiving a bus in a trade for several motorcycles. He decided to use that bus and four others he later purchased to help transport disabled people in his community. The transit agency has memorandums of understanding with Sierra Madre and Monrovia to transport disabled people.

He said he formed the San Gabriel Valley Transit Authority Police Department shortly afterward in part because he has long been interested in police work. He also found that having a police department allowed him to do background checks on potential volunteers more quickly and seek federal money for security on the buses.

Yes, that's true. The San Gabriel Valley Transit Authority Police Department was created by the owner of Homer's Auto Service! And the owner of Homer's Auto Service is also one of the three commissioners for the San Gabriel Valley Transit Authority and its Police Department. But it gets better:

The Ferrari's owner, Stefan Eriksson, showed deputies a card stating that he was deputy police commissioner of the San Gabriel Transit Authority Police's anti-terrorism division. A few minutes after the crash, two other men who said they were with Homeland Security appeared at the scene and eventually took Eriksson away.

"We are just trying to help people," Maiwandi said, adding that he feels his agency is being unfairly tarnished because of his association with the Ferrari crash. "I wish he was driving a Corvette."

Maiwandi said he came in contact with Eriksson from another member of the transit board, Eriksson's civil attorney, Ashley Posner. Neither Posner nor Eriksson would comment.

Maiwandi said Eriksson approached him with an offer. Eriksson volunteered to install free surveillance cameras and a "facial recognition scan" — which could compare a person's image to one depicted in a wanted poster — on a bus to show law enforcement agencies how that could be helpful in catching criminals. He said he had given a similar system to transit agencies in England.

After a background check on Eriksson came back clean, Maiwandi said, he told the businessman he could use the authority's five buses to install the equipment.

In return for his volunteer efforts, Eriksson was made a deputy commissioner of the police department and given business cards. But Maiwandi denied that the other two men who said they were with Homeland Security had anything to do with his organization.

Although the department's website suggests that it is a fully functioning police agency, Maiwandi acknowledged that it consists of six people, including himself and the chief, who he said is a former Los Angeles police officer who volunteers his services.

So now we know who the three commissoners of the San Gabriel Valley Transit Authority are--Maiwandi, Eriksson, and Eriksson's civil attorney, Ashley Posner. Eriksson was made a deputy commissioner of the police department, after installing all these cool security features, such as surveillance cameras and a facial recognition scanner. How many city and county transit authorities have facial recognition scanners installed on their buses? Even more, this fully functioning police force has a staff of six people--including Maiwandi himself? I wonder if Eriksson heads up the police department's anti-terrorism unit?

I thought I could satirize this story with space aliens and secret government conspiracies, but the more I read this, the more absurd it becomes. A police department developed out of privately-owned non-profit transportation agency for disable people? I have to wonder, do the folks that drive the buses, transporting their disable clients, also carry Glock handguns? Do you need that much security for transporting disabled people--I mean, why would a criminal want to hijack a bus?

But there's more:

State public utility regulations allow transit agencies to create police departments — even if they are not certified by the state's central training body for peace officers.

Typically, such private police departments are established by universities — such as Stanford, USC and Whittier College — or transit agencies like the Napa Valley Railroad.

But forming a police department is not as big a deal as it might seem.

State officials said police agencies cannot arrest people unless their personnel meet training and hiring standards set down by state law.

Most local police agencies are certified by California's Commission on Police Officer Standards and Training. But Alan Deal, a spokesman for the agency, said the San Gabriel Valley Transit Authority Police Department has not been certified.

Without meeting state standards, a police officer has few powers beyond that of a security guard, who can carry weapons and make citizen's arrests.

Deal said that his agency has discovered that several railroad agencies around California have created police departments — even though the companies have no rail lines in California to patrol. The police certification agency is seeking to decertify those agencies because it sees no reason for them to exist in California.

The issue of private transit firms creating police agencies has in recent years been a concern in Illinois, where several individuals with criminal histories created railroads as a means of forming a police agency.

What really scares me is this whole idea that transit agencies can quickly and easily create their own private police departments--police departments that are not certified by the state. The issue here is really one of perception--what constitutes a "police officer?" One perception of a police officer is that of an individual, trained by the state, to enforce the laws of the city, state, and federal government, and to keep the peace within society. A police officer is authorized by the state to carry and discharge firearms, as defined by the state through their regulations and restrictions. A police officer may legally kill a citizen of the state, per the state regulations and restrictions (such as self-defense). Now I understand that there can be private organizations that can form their own police organizations--colleges and universities are an example. But if these private organizations would like to form their own police departments, then such departments would have to meet the same strict training and legal requirements for its officers, just as other city police departments are required to do. And if these organizations are not certified, then they have no right to call themselves a "police department." They are nothing more than a security firm.

The concern here is that if such private firms can form uncertified police departments within the state, then individuals running these departments can use their image as a "police department" for their own self-interests, including illegal or criminal activities. And the regular police departments would have no clue--think about it! The San Gabriel Valley Transit Authority Police Department would have never attracted the Sheriff's Department's attention, had it not been for the Ferarri crash. Who knows what these six guys in their little department could have been doing? I certainly don't believe that the San Gabriel Valley Transit Authority Police Department had an Internal Affairs Division to root out crooked cops. Consider this:

Eriksson, 44, is a former executive with the video game machine company Gizmondo who left the firm shortly before a Swedish newspaper ran allegations that he had been convicted of counterfeiting a decade before in Sweden. Officials at the Swedish National Police confirmed Tuesday that he has a criminal record.

What a mess.