Judge Twits Police, Trash Law : Lame Scavenger Fined One Dime

For nearly 40 years, Alfonso Vasquez worked the harvests up and down Southern California, using his stout legs and strong hands to earn a few dollars an hour picking cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, strawberries or “whatever paid,” he said.

“I am not a lazy man--I have always worked,” said Vasquez, 59, sitting on the stoop in front of the house he rents in Anaheim, a crutch in either hand. Two years ago, an auto accident permanently damaged his spine, leaving him with only partial feeling in his hands and feet. With no other skills, little English, a diabetic wife and five of his nine children still at home, Vasquez began scavenging in trash bins behind supermarkets for food.

So when two policemen in Orange approached him behind an Alpha Beta market one Saturday morning last month and ticketed him for allegedly perusing the store’s garbage, Vasquez thought someone had made a mistake.

“It was their error, wasn’t it?” Vasquez asked. “Those cops were young--they don’t have any civilization yet, maybe they haven’t suffered in their lives. Because when you see an invalid, without anything, you help him, you don’t give him a ticket.”

Unless you’re in Orange and he’s looking for something edible or usable in the trash. An ordinance passed this summer makes rummaging through trash bins illegal, with violators subject to a $500 fine.

“It (the ordinance) is not meant to keep people from getting aluminum cans or cardboard, said Orange Councilman Don Smith. “But we were getting a lot of complaints from people in the commercial areas. They (scavengers) were causing a lot of problems and attracting rodents by leaving the garbage they didn’t want on the ground.”

Vasquez, who said he was looking for boxes “and maybe some tomatoes or cans of food” when he was ticketed, had his day in court this week. With most of his welfare checks eaten up by $600 rental payments, he could not have paid the fine, he said, and was prepared to go to jail for the first time in his life.

Central Municipal Judge Bobby D. Youngblood, calling the ticket and the ordinance “ludicrous,” reduced Vasquez’s fine to a single Roosevelt dime.

“That I had,” said Vasquez, laughing as he pulled a receipt from the court for 10 cents out of the plastic bag he uses for a wallet.

“I fined him the dime to show exactly what I thought that kind of police work is worth,” said Youngblood, who recently announced that he is running for sheriff. “I think it’s a shame that in our society a man who is hungry has to look into someone else’s trash for something to eat, but I also think it’s pathetic when it becomes police business.”

Youngblood’s announcement that he is a candidate for sheriff has raised a few eyebrows, as have previous actions by the unconventional judge.

Some judges have privately questioned whether Youngblood should remain on the bench since a campaign committee, with Youngblood’s blessing, already is seeking contributions. “He has absolutely no business sitting on the bench now that those letters soliciting campaign funds have gone out,” said a judge who declined to be identified.

Youngblood, however, maintains that he does not have to leave the bench until he makes his candidacy official by filing papers with the registrar of voters next spring. And he denies that sentences such as the one he gave Vasquez are publicity seekers.

“I didn’t think about whether it would help me or not,” Youngblood said. “I just knew it was the right thing to do.”

Times staff writer Jerry Hicks contributed to this story.