Arrests Rise In Unlicensed Driving Initiative

Ten years later, a life still wracked with pain

By Taylor K. Vecsey

 

Taylor K. Vecsey Ed Prado was hit by an unlicensed driver in November 1996. “I’m in pain every single day,” said Mr. Prado, seen at work at the Marshall and Sons service station in Montauk.

(07/19/2007)    Ed Prado was working late one night about 10 years ago, getting ready to tow a Jeep Cherokee that had broken down on the highway in Montauk, when a car driven by an unlicensed driver hit him, sending him through the air.

    Mr. Prado landed out of sight behind the Jeep and was left semiconscious on the side of the road with several broken bones as the unlicensed motorist drove away without stopping.

    He was only discovered when someone who recognized his tow truck stopped to investigate. That person knew Mr. Prado, and thought it odd that his truck, which was already hooked up to the Jeep, appeared to have been abandoned. Mr. Prado said his life changed that night, not just because he was seriously injured, but because he was essentially left for dead beside Route 27.

    Despite the danger unlicensed drivers pose to themselves and others, as experienced by Mr. Prado on Nov. 8, 1996, driving without a license is not a crime in the way that, for example, driving with a suspended license is. Unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle is considered a traffic violation; aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle is a misdemeanor under the law.

    In the years since Mr. Prado’s accident, however, law enforcement officials have taken the issue increasingly seriously. Stronger enforcement within the past five years has yielded more arrests, tickets, and fines.

    Every year, police departments on the South Fork arrest and ticket hundreds of people for driving without a license — both those who have never had licenses and those who have had their licenses suspended. Within the East Hampton Town Police Department’s jurisdiction, the number of arrests in 2006 of people driving with suspended licenses increased by 15.7 percent over 2005. Chief Todd Sarris attributes this jump to an initiative to make roads safer, to bring the number of serious accidents down, and to better enforce vehicle and traffic laws. His department also issued 994 citations in 2006 to drivers who have never held a license, up about 2 percent from 2005.

    East Hampton Village police have taken an even tougher approach. According to Chief Gerard Larsen, the department implemented a strict new policy in 2003, under which every unlicensed driver who does not have an acceptable form of identification is arrested. Chief Larsen said that the policy had been adopted after news broke that Mohamed Atta, one of the terrorists involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, had been caught driving in Florida without a license but only been ticketed. In the first year of the new policy, 63 people were arrested. By 2006, that number

    Jorge Astudillo was arrested by town police the day after his car struck Mr. Prado. “He caught my leg. Broke my leg up in four, five places. Broke my back, broke my arm . . . and kept on going,” Mr. Prado said, recalling the night of the accident, which occurred sometime before 9:30 p.m. Not able to prove that Mr. Astudillo, allegedly an illegal immigrant, had been drunk at the time, police charged him with leaving the scene of an accident involving an injury, a felony, and driving without a license.

    Mr. Prado only remembers waking up in a bed at Stony Brook University Hospital, “black and blue from the bottom of my ears to the tips of my toes,” he said in a recent interview. He doesn’t remember being hit, or even the moment he realized a car was heading toward him, but he said that that doesn’t really matter.

    “I’m in pain every day. Every single solitary day, I remember that motor vehicle accident. Every time I drive by that spot, I remember the pain,” he said, sitting surrounded by his machinery and tools at Marshall and Sons Service Station in Montauk.

    The Prado family’s health insurance covered his hospitalization costs and medical bills, which he estimated had amounted to about $250,000. Aside from a small, $20,000 liability policy on Mr. Astudillo’s car, Mr. Prado said the court never ordered any restitution, nor did he get any money from Mr. Astudillo.

    The family hired a New York City law firm to explore their options, but in the end, Mr. Prado said, the attorney’s advice was simple: “You can’t get something from zero.”

    Had Mr. Astudillo stopped after his car struck Mr. Prado, and called for help, Mr. Prado said, he would feel completely different about it today. “Shit happens. It would have been over.”

    At his arraignment in East Hampton Town Justice Court, Mr. Astudillo was ordered held without bail. When police found him, he had removed the license plates from his Hyundai and abandoned it; he was holding an Ecuadorian passport, and all of his money and property were ready to go, according to a police report. Police believed he planned to flee the country.

    Mr. Prado spent the next month and a half in the hospital, battling infections even after his injuries had been treated. The man who hit him sat in jail. At county court in January 1997, Mr. Astudillo was sentenced to one year; he served eight months in the Suffolk County jail in Riverside, and was released in July for good behavior.

    According to records at the jail, Mr. Astudillo was arrested again in 1999 on a felony driving while intoxicated charge, after an accident in Riverhead. The felony charge was imposed because he had already been convicted of the lesser, misdemeanor count. He left the scene of that accident, as well. He was sentenced to six months in June of that year, and was released in October. Following a recorded 2002 felony assault indictment in county court, the paper trail ends.

    Earlier this month, Mr. Prado said he had never been sure what had become of the court case or of the man who hit him. He said his injuries and long recovery prevented him from supervising his part of the family-owned fuel, auto, and plumbing business for about five months after the accident. He was wheelchair-bound for about six months, a situation, he said, his house did not lend itself well to. Built in the 1950s, the doorways were too small for him to maneuver. Volunteers from the Montauk Fire Department, of which Mr. Prado had served as chief, took apart the doorjambs, leaving rooms barren of doors and privacy.

    His daughter, Pilar, then 13 or 14, struggled seeing her father, once the provider, physically debilitated, he remembered. Despite extra help from his brothers, Mr. Prado said, his business took a hit. He and his wife also had to dip into their son Michael’s college fund, even though he was starting as a freshman at Adelphi the following fall. “We still had a mortgage, car loans, a household to upkeep. It wasn’t easy.”

Enforcement Rises
    Chief Sarris was a captain in the town police department when Mr. Prado was run down. He said a number of traffic accidents within his jurisdiction that caused serious injuries, and a fatal accident, had prompted the initiative to improve enforcement of the vehicle and traffic law as 2005 turned into 2006. He felt the department had practiced “selective enforcement” in previous years.

    “Every year, we set goals and objectives. We weren’t comfortable with the number of serious accidents, so we stepped up enforcement,” he said. “I’m not so sure the increase is because of more motorists on the road, or just that we are much more aggressively out there.”

    In 2006, his officers issued citations to 994 people for driving without a license, up 16 from 2005. The department arrested 243 people for driving with suspended licenses, up by 33 from 2005.

    But despite the push to pursue unlicensed motorists more aggressively, drivers who are not legally allowed on the road are still getting on the road in large numbers. The chief admits that dealing with unlicensed drivers keeps his department busy, whether an officer is writing a summons (which can often take about half an hour) or arresting a motorist. Still, the chief said, his department is not overburdened, and he “wouldn’t classify it as a major problem.”

    The town police department’s policy relies on officers’ discretion, or that of their supervisors, to decide whether or not to arrest or simply to ticket someone for driving without a license. The decision is based on whether the officer can verify the driver’s identity.

    East Hampton Village police, in contrast, do not rely on the discretion of the officer. They abide strictly by their policy of arresting every unlicensed driver who does not have an acceptable form of identification, even though the law does not require them to do so. Chief Larsen called it “a great policy” that had uncovered warrants of all kinds, including orders of deportation from the Department of Homeland Security’s Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

    The village police department made 121 arrests for unlicensed operation in 2006, and 89 in 2005. Lt. Mike Tracey said the numbers have increased steadily since the policy was implemented in 2003; 63 were arrested that year.

    East Hampton Village police implemented a strict new policy in 2003, under which every unlicensed driver who does not have an acceptable form of identification is arrested.

    Lieutenant Tracey said the department had an obligation to confirm the identity of anyone breaking the law. While he said it was undeniable that a large proportion of those driving on the South Fork without ever having held a license are immigrants, and those immigrants are  mainly Latino, he said the village police’s “policy is law-specific, and race and bias-neutral.” (Whether those immigrants are in the country legally or illegally is not an issue under local police jurisdiction.)

    “The goal is to remove unlicensed drivers from the road,” the lieutenant said. “It doesn’t target any one race.

. . . It targets unlicensed drivers.”

    As an example, he said, a French citizen who presented a Chinese passport to officers during a traffic stop last year was arrested. “Our policy was able to force that arrest,” he said. “I took a beating over that” from a consulate in New York City, he added. However, he said, “the burden is on the motorist” to produce a form of identification that the officer can read it and comprehend.

    Sag Harbor Village police, unlike their East Hampton counterparts, do not arrest unlicensed drivers. In 2006, the department, which patrols two square miles, arrested 128 people for driving with a suspended license, and ticketed 357 people for driving without a license.

    Oftentimes, paying a $250 fine for unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle, or up to $1,000 for driving with a suspended license, is “the price of doing business,” and fails to act as a deterrent, Lieutenant Tracey said. “The court is seeing a tremendous amount of unlicensed drivers, and it’s a revolving door.” He hopes his department’s stronger enforcement acts as a true deterrent, and that numbers will soon decrease.

Chronic Pain
    Almost 11 years after the hit-and-run, chronic back pain still interferes with Mr. Prado’s work as a mechanic, and the stiffness and discomfort from the metal plates in his left calf and thigh keep him from playing golf as much as he used to. In the winter, the metal plates get so cold that he is considering retiring to Florida earlier than he had previously planned.

    As a victim and the son of a Spanish immigrant, he said, he would like illegal immigrants to have access to some sort of driver’s education, so that the roads are safer. He knows the battle over immigration reform is complicated, “but something’s got to be done,” he said. “I don’t think there’s any easy fix to the situation.”

    “People don’t realize . . . the aftermath of years off your life” if you’ve been in a serious accident, he said.

    Fighting back tears, his voice trembling slightly, Mr. Prado said that at 55 he is wracked not only with physical ailments, but with emotional difficulties that weigh on him, on his marriage, and on his family.

    “Pause for a second. Really think about it. Imagine having to wake your wife up just so you could go to the bathroom when it’s virtually 15 feet away from your bed. That’s what every day was like for us. Now put that into weeks and then months.”

    Sheila Prado, his high school sweetheart, shifted from his partner in their personal and business lives to his caretaker, he said. “People have no idea what that does to a husband and wife relationship.”