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Yes, I was pulled over leaving the court house because…get this, A cracked windshield, that wasn’t cracked. The officers ran my plate and stated that DMV records show that i have no insurance. I told them that i paid for it 4 days ago and showed them my receipt. They stated that since DMV had no record of it they would be towing my vehicle. I argued extensively that my receipt was valid proof of insurance. However they proceeded to call for a tow truck to take my vehicle. I determined that by no other definition they were stealing my vehicle. So i called 911 and reported 2 officers were stealing my vehicle. The ward sargeant showed up and decided to agree that my receipt for the insurance was not proof of insurance and they impounded my vehicle and did not write me a citation for “No insurance”. Instead i was cited for “license plate impeded by trailor hitch”When i showed up in court it was determined to be an invalid tow, however to get back my vehicle would require paying the tow company a hook up fee and storage to the amount of $1,300.

I had a situation once with a car I had sold. I sold it to a 17 year old kid and his mother. Since he wasn’t legal, I made the mother sign a receipt. It wasn’t roadworthy because it needed brakes. The kid wanted it to rebuild in auto shop class. I wouldn’t let him drive it away. I insisted it be towed.This was back around 1990 and the car in question was a 1973 Barracuda. This was New Jersey. Since I had it a while and I’m a car guy I even took a photo of it when it was picked up by the tow truck.About a year later I got a summons in the mail for abandoning a vehicle. Apparently junior never titled or registered the car. I went and spoke with the prosecutor in the town. I showed him the receipt I had plus the photo of the car on the tow truck showing the towing company’s name.The prosecutor smiled and said often people come to court on this same charge and say they sold the car, but don’t have proof. He said he was glad I had proof. I would have to appear in court with my documents and he’d decline to prosecute. Great!I thought it might be interesting to get the car back so I asked him. He said that right then the car was still legally mine and it was abandoned. BUT.. I would have to plead guilty to abandoning the car, a few hundred in fines and court costs. Then I’d have to go pay impound then towing and storage charges. I decided against that route!I did go to court. A friend of mine who always thought authority was against him was sure that the prosecutor was lying to me and would put me in jail! Of course this is America and the prosecutor was true to his word. As soon as my name was called on the roster, he stood up and dropped the charges.And I believe the kid’s mother got a summons in the mail.

Predatory towing.While this may not be the most life-ruining experience, it certainly causes you to fantasize about using baseball bats in ways you’ve never imagined after being a victim of such an atrocity.It still boils my blood thinking about it.Let me explain:I live in quite an affluent and liberal area - Montgomery County, MD to be exact. Montgomery County borders directly against Washington D.C., so the government basically fuels the entire economy and causes people to flock to the area. Of course, not everyone is rich, or even well-off. There are a lot of poor people in the area, including immigrants - a lot of whom are ‘undocumented’. These people are hurt the most by this specific brand of towing.Basically, here’s how it works -At first, a parking lot may be abused. Let’s say I want to visit a friend, but there’s no parking, so…eh, what the heck? I’ll just park in the grocery store parking lot nearby and walk over. Maybe Safeway gets tired of people taking up their parking spaces, but not doing any shopping. Let’s say it gets really bad after a while and there’s no spaces for paying customers to park, so they start to have cars towed away when people park there and walk “off premises”. Seems pretty logical, right?That’s the innocent example, but here’s what it snowballed into:A woman pulls into a McDonald’s parking lot - her son wanted a burger. She parks. He walks into McDonald’s, she walks to the post office 2 doors down. She comes out 7 minutes later to find her car, front wheels hoisted off the ground by a tow truck (one of the short ones with no bed, just a crane on the back). She is confused, scared, angry that someone is ‘stealing’ her car (as far as she understands it). She confronts the Shrek looking man who is operating the tow truck. He tells her (in his most practiced rude attitude) that ‘walk-offs’ are not allowed. He points to a sign in the far corner of the parking lot, under a tree. When examining the 18″x24″ sign (minimum regulation size) it looks something like thisIt basically says “2 hours parking only; if you park and leave you will be towed” then a bunch of fine print, but at the bottom it says “Towing charge $440; storage per day ~$40” (can't quite make out the storage price). So, you get towed, you go pick you car up immediately, and it’s “$480 to get your car out” they say with a smile.The woman argues, saying she has a receipt for the McDonald’s. Her son is holding the food in the McDonald’s bag.He ignores her and says “The tow bill is $440 plus $40/day when you pick it up from Rockville (12 miles away), or I can drop it now for $250 cash.”She tries to argue more, but he continues lifting the car up. As she is yelling she doesn’t have $250 in cash, he walks to the truck, gets in, and leaves with her car.Scenario 2:In addition to pretty much all businesses having some sort of deal with towing (the business gets a kickback because the towing is so profitable), all apartment complexes have adopted a similar deal. Remember how I said immigrants are a large part of the population in Montgomery County? Do you know that immigrants usually live crammed in one household? Well…When you’ve got 8 hispanics living in a 2 bedroom apartment, and 6 of them have jobs, they all have cars to get to work. But the apartment complex only gives out 1 parking permit per adult resident allowed to live there - 1 per bedroom. So the hispanic family only has 2 parking permits, but they have 6 cars. What do they do?Well, the first night they likely make a huge mistake - they park in the lot without a permit. Towing is allowed to start at 10pm, so a “scout” or “spotter” shows up at 9:48pm walking around with a flashlight looking for parking permits in the window. You remember “oh crap! I need to move my car by 10pm!” You walk outside to see your car being towed up the hill at 10:02pm, gone. $480 at the tow lot in Rockville, 12 miles away. An entire week’s pay - gone.Scenario 3:You see your car being raised off the ground. You run up to the guy and start arguing. He says the “$250 cash and I drop it”. You pay him, he pockets it, and goes to hook up someone else’s car 10 feet away. Rinse and repeat.These towing companies quickly realized how profitable it can be to employ these predatory towing practices (a tow company could make $5,000 per tow truck in a night), and it became rampant in Montgomery County throughout the 2000s. There was very little regulation on the books. Around 2013 it really started getting atrociously bad. Even though there were some rules on the books by then, they were nearly unenforceable, or just plain not enforced. The use of “scouts” was made illegal, but hard to prove, so the towing companies kept using scouters because they are so profitable. Additionally, these tow companies will ignore some smaller rules - such as being required to have an ATM on premises. Another problem is them damaging your vehicle. You ever try to get an auto shop to admit they dinged your door while they were working on your car? These guys are 100x worse. I’ve seen all-wheel drive cars being towed (front wheels on the ground) that are jerking and bucking all over the place because the transmission is still in gear and it’s catching. I was once towed and they broke my windshield. In addition to the $300 tow bill, I got a “it was like that when we towed it” in respond to my cracked windshield.There is nearly zero recourse. Me, an angry white male who speaks proficient english, tried to file a complaint with the “Office of Consumer Protection (OCP)” in Montgomery County. The investigator (investigator XXY) told me things like ‘the owner is never in the office’ and ‘they haven’t responded yet’. BRO! You are literally THE government. It’s your job to police these guys. About 6 months later, my dad’s truck had been towed so we went to pick it up from one of these scumdumsters. As we were paying, an official looking guy comes in and starts talking all buddy-buddy with these chumbuckets. Stuff like “oh how’s Linda? And the kids?” I realize that he’s supposed to be some sort of inspector. I talk to him and find out he works for the OCP. “Oh, wow. Do you know investigator XXY by chance?” ‘I am investigator XXY!’ oh well fuck you thenIt’s starting to be cracked down on. Here are some articles that make my heart singMontgomery County Looks To Crack Down On Predatory Tow Trucks | WAMUDrivers to Receive $214 After Ruling Against Towing Co.Illegal Towing Continues in Montgomery Co. Ahead of New Law