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.
It is there where the story of the little transit authority intersects with the story of the rare Ferrari, which crashed last month in Malibu.
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.
