Sounds like a episode of Dukes of Hazard where Rosco puts a fake fire hydrant down next to a park car then write a ticket to make money. Maybe that's where they got the idea from.
The difference is that Roscoe wasn't venal or malicious, whereas Philly...is where grown men in Eagles gear talk shit to little kids wearing other teams' jerseys just to make them cry.
@@paulforester6996 in one episode, Hoyt Axton gets caught in Boss Hogg's celebrity speedtrap and sings a song called out of state cars about a corrupt town with a remote controlled red light to generate revenue. Rosco is seen taking notes when hoyt explains that the yellow light only lasts 1/10 of a second LOL.
@Donny D well, first things first. If anything, make an absolute demand for the precipitating cause. Either the event, incident, or maintainable that required the tow is divulged, or the people that are stonewalling will begin to receive criminal complaints. Yes, you can do this, and it doesn't require a police force, nor any other law enforcement agency. Anyone that refuses to do their job thereafter gets another criminal complaint. Once it gets so far down the line, well before it gets to the Federal level, a certain set of people will start to take notice. The people that bond and indemnify them. They lose thay, they become unemployable. To them, that's worse than jail, and they can be wiped put in a lawsuit. People need to start filing the criminal charges, and right now.
Cameras likely owned by the same people declaring these spots off limits. In a city where parking is at a premium, wouldn’t shock me at all if private lot owners abuse this system to turn parking spots over. Just have a driver dump them wherever.
That 'system' may itself be a fabrication to facilitate the system. We only have their word that the vehicle wasn't impounded direct from the legal parking spot.
Racketeering charges for everybody in the entire chain, permanently terminate the license of every tow company that partnered in this massive criminal enterprise, and a lifetime ban for everybody in the tow business who was enriched by it. And publish ALL the names. Then start using bait cars with GPS and camera surveillance. Put them in the public eye and make it so big and so ugly that the city can't ignore it.
You should check out a story Out of Philly from back in 2013 about up about a traffic court Scandal which put three of the judges in federal court and they serve Federal time
If they TOWED the city's cars and the mayor's cars this would stop INSTANLY Put the politicians cars and trucks at a MILITERY base. Federal land towing is a lot harder to get car back. And a ton of PAPERWORK. Might even get a hearing and wait a year before retrieving car. Their crap would freeze before pulling ILLEGAL tows for profits. Make sure you put it in all the local papers. Taxpayer's will throw a fit at having to foot the bill on their illegal tows in the first place will ram the nonsense down their throats in court.
Living in a big city reminds me of Thomas Jefferson's remarks about overpopulated Europe. "Like rats crawling all over each other." We have a responsibility to remember that our rights end when another's begins. Otherwise we have unequal rights.
A courtesy tow can be valid in some cases such as a failed water main. Cars can be moved to give access to the repair crew. But who ever moves the car has a duty of care.
Kind of just this time it is illegal under the law. Grand theft auto, extortion, selling stolen goods, and most likely other crimes too. So as they did not go and take them under the law they are stolen. As the value is most likely over $1000 it is grand theft. As it is a car it is auto theft. As they try to get you to pay for your own car back it is extortion. As they put it up for auction and sell it it is selling stolen goods.
@@tonypegler3618 Well that one only applies to the police not the towing company, the towing employee, and a few others in this chain of who is being sued.
Same thing happened to a friend of ours. MD plates in VA. Sign says no overnight parking without sticker. Friend goes over there in the evening to tend to a friend’s dog while she was on vacation. Goes home to MD. Returns next morning to tend to dog again. Tow company comes along and tows car. Says he saw it the prior evening therefore it must have been there overnight.
Planning on auctioning off a car because it was impounded for 9 days. That seems awfully quick. I thought they had to keep it for 90 days or something before it goes to auction.
A lot of our cities are becoming little banana republics. This is why I moved from Seattle to rural Kentucky almost 11 years ago. It totally changed my life in a very, very good way.
@@utah133 haha! I used to joke with people that though I loved Kentucky it was still under the rule of the two dumbest laws ever passed in the United states. That would be prohibition and forced School busing. But interestingly, though I moved to a dry county, I was literally just a couple of miles from a liquor store in a wet county. That wet county was also the home to the cornbread Mafia. Pretty much all the counties are wet now. They've all gone wet just in the last seven or eight years. Pretty remarkable. I think Jefferson county is the only School district that still does busing, but that would be expected, since they're The bluest county in the entire state.
If they see a car they like or want, they take it... sit on it, and hope they can pass it off to who wanted it within the city. When I used to work in a technical profession, I was offered various impound cars. Some of them were never claimed by the people. This is just legalized taking or theft.
We were in Baltimore, the price of a parking ticket was $25.00. The price of parking in a garage overnight was $30.00. We just paid 4 parking tickets and saved $20.00.
I currently live in Philadelphia and have been for 22 years now. This is so true and not just with this Courtesy Tow. The reason why the Name of the Towing Company will never be given is because someone is getting Kick-Backs from the Towing Companies and don't want the Flow of Funds to Stop.
This brings back memories of when I moved into a small town 20 miles north of Philly. One of the local cops resented me purchasing a home his lawyer friend wanted, direct from the VA. I was a veteran his friend was not. And it cost me a days lost pay, and a $100 fine. When after I left for work. He placed a temporary no parking sign up and "towed" my car to the Boro garage. I reported it stolen and the Sergeant said no, it was just moved and I could pick it up, no ticket was issued. After I picked up the car, the original cop wrote up a parking ticket, and criminal trespass charges. I fought and lost. And smile the JP said if I wanted to risk jail time I could appeal.
You joke, but seriously whats stopping people from just coming and taking their property back with force? Someone steals one of my cars and tells me I have to pay a grand to get it back, they're going to have a really bad time. I'd have no problem taking a pound of flesh for the initial transgression and an additional pound of flesh for anything the initial pound might set in motion.
Years ago, we once ('82, '83?) had to leave my GF's rough '62 Plymouth in a legal parking spot within a residential subdivision after it began overheating. Next morning she received a call from a man indentifying as a TN State Trooper, informing her that it had been towed from a no parking zone. When I went to check the parking spot I noticed two tracks of rubber on the pavement starting from where we had parked (legally) and ending up the street in a space next to a no parking sign. When we got the car back I noticed two deep, dark smuges on the rear bumper that weren't there before. And that's when the light bulb went off. Turns out the distance between the smuges was a perfect match with the push bumper used on THP patrol cars. More snooping uncovered that the spot we first left the car put it smack dab in front of the home of the very trooper that had called the GF about the tow. Used a police buddy back channel to make sure he heard about our discovery, but never heard anything back about it.
Homer to Burns: “Here are your messages. "You have 30 minutes to move your car." "You have ten minutes." "Your car has been impounded." "Your car has been crushed into a cube." “You have 30 minutes to move your cube."
The only reason it's legal is because some city officials believe they have the power to do anything they want to. As far as they're concerned the citizens don't have rights, only privileges that can be snatched away whenever they please.
Any time qualified immunity is used by a government employee, they need to be imprisoned for ten years in prison and any pension plan confiscated. Problem solved.
It would be interesting to see this happen to a Tesla, that can record around the car, and track the GPS locations. Exhibit A video would cut through the crap.
Promotion. Low level employees might need to be disciplined for PR, but the architects will be fine. Which of course is a miscarriage of justice, but that's the system working as intended.
It would be interesting to cross reference a list of Towing Companies and their owners with a list of Campaign Contributions to Philadelphia politicians. Could there be some overlap? The City likely gets its cut out of this racket. But my guess is that the big money is flowing to the Towing Companies and through them onward to the politicians.
I live near Philly. This is the same city that, for years, has been randomly going through PennDot databases to get license plate numbers and sending parking tickets to people who have ever been to philly in the car that was ticketed.
Yep; Happened to my brother. The reason he realized this was his new car had the wrong license plate. The only place where the description of the car, the license plate number, and his address were available was on the PennDUH database.
I get a ticket on my work van every time I have to go to a Verizon CO to do a delivery or clean out. They basically make the entire street in front of the building a no parking zone.
@@aldopopow8884 not really it’s a scam that’s been done many times over lot owners pay a tow driver under the table to move cars out of a lot so they can sell the parking spot again, the tow drivers know no one bothers to police the relation towing and they just drop the car in either the first spot they find, legal or not, or if they have a towing contract with the police they leave it where they will get a call and paid to tow it again. City is just turning a blind eye to the problem cause it’s not affecting them so why spend the time and money to fix it
OMG There’s a show called Philadelphia Parking Wars . They still show the old episodes. So If you haven’t seen it you need to. It is very interesting, funny and scary. After watching the show I swore I would never go to Philadelphia with a car. I believe this is the major source of revenue for the city.
Hey Steve, I'm sure you are aware of the city of Taylor, MI, their tow yard was ran by cousins of council members for years, it was a huge racket for them from the mid 90's to who knows when...
This happened to me. I live in Montreal, and many years ago I lived downtown. When they have to do Snow Removal, a truck with a loud siren will slowly pass down the street. All residents need to go to their cars and move them to allow the snow trucks to have unrestricted access to the street, as they blow the snow into a long train of dump trucks who then haul it to a designated dumping area. It's quite an operation. Unfortunately, they rarely keep to any schedule, and I happened to not be at home when they passed. So they tow your car to another street nearby, in my case it was 10 blocks away. I asked the siren truck where my car was towed when I returned home later, as they were still in the area, and they couldn't tell me, and said try calling the head office. There was no record of where I was towed, so I couldn't find the car. To make matters worse, all the cars were covered in snow from the storm, and this makes all cars look alike, so you could walk past your car and no recognize it. It took a full week to find my car, a friend spotted it as it was so far (10 blocks) which is a lot of walking downtown Montreal. But when I went to get it, there were about 6 parking tickets on the windshield, as the spot they towed it to was no parking during certain hours. I ended up going to traffic court, explained what had happened, and they cancelled all the tickets. But if it wasn't for a friend spotting it, I never would have found it. They need a better system, like a picture of the car in the new spot on their website sorted by license plate numbers so you can look up where they put it. P.S. Love your show, and I notice you often wear McGill t-shirt. I went to McGill, in fact this towing happened when I was a student living in the McGill Ghetto. Did you go to McGill? Undergrad or Law? Keep up the great work. PPS maybe do a show on the rights and requirements of Tourist (IE Canadians) who get pulled over in the USA. Is it the same? Can we invoke 1st or 4th Amendment rights? What about walking down the street, are are equal rights when there not on visa, but just say in Florida for 2 week vacation.
Take a photo of your car when you park it. Require tow companies to take a photo before towing a car, and make them immediately liable if their photo doesn’t exist or doesn’t reasonably match the photo you took when you parked it.
You assume they are acting for the city… sounds much more to me like they are using a system no one has any control over as a front to basically turn over paid parking spots. They can simply say it was a “ courtesy tow” no one asks questions no paper trail
Yup you pay whatever to park in the lot, they have the tow driver go drop ya wherever and the next guy pays for your spot again. Lot owner gets rich and the city just turns a blind eye
It is interesting how all the victims are named but no details on how the process works or who is responsible. We are not good at getting to the root of problems.
This is when you wish government employees would be personally fined for stupidity. Things will never change without there being consequences for the individuals responsible.
Detroit 1981. My brother loaded a U-Haul with all of his belongings, was moving to Az. Trucked parked in our own driveway. Woke up to find the truck missing, reported it. It was towed in the middle of the night and delivered to impound lot with no explanation. He had to pay towing and storage to stop U-Haul charges plus nearly everything in the truck was gone.
Father to son: where did you get the idea that life was "fair"? Mother adds: this is why we can't have nice things. Well, I always thought mom and dad hadn't really got to the bottom of things anyway . . .
There is a song about a towing company called Lincoln Park towing in Chicago. The song is called Lincoln Park Pirates sung by Steve Goodman. Look up album version of the song it tells about towing in Chicago in the 60s and 70s.
Yea, my wife got a parking ticket mailed to her from Washington DC parking enforcement for 35.00 for parking in a loading zone.... problem was, we've never been to DC.. had tried to fight, but it was far cheaper to pay it.... we live 3 hours away and not worth taking time off...
Many years ago, I got a parking ticket in the mail, for someplace in Northern California. Problem was, I live in the southern part of the state. I phoned to the parking enforcement of that locality and told them that I never was as far north as Central California, let alone Northern California. As requested, I made a statement to that fact and never heard about this again.
Had my legally parked car booted. Why you ask: 9 parking tickets which had "outstanding balance". 6 of those tickets were dismissed months prior, the remaining 3 were paid in full two days after receiving them. Called the city to complain and ask boot to be released, even sent all documents and receipts to their office. They confirmed that it was indeed an error but they are unable to release the boot without a payment. After payment I can request a refund but the boot fee is not refundable. Wtf? That was $325 alone! So now with "late penalties and additional fees" I had to fork out $1,700 for their mistake. It's been 2yrs, never got my money. Welcome to NYC. Keep all your records.
I visited Chicago and got towed but the cop helped me out. I went to lunch in a small strip mall that had posted signs for customer parking only. I parked and went into one of the stores then to the store next door for a togo food order. While I was waiting for my food a tow truck came in and grabbed my car because the driver saw me go into the shop adjacent to the strip mall. He hooked my car and dragged it into the street where he then stopped to secure it for the ride to the impound lot. When I came out, my car was gone but a cop was parked near by. I went to the cop and he said this is a problem here and he found the driver still securing my car 1 block over. He threatened to site the driver for towing a car without securing it first and made him return it to me. The driver argued he saw me enter a store that wasn't apart of the parking lot but I had my receipt from the store that was so the Cop made him drop it. It was late back to work but I had my car back.
I suspect the details regarding who is responsible for the bad tows and misplaced notices are "lost" for public safety reasons. The quality of life for those individuals would be severely compromised if their identities were to be made public.
Parking in a lot of city’s is a premium resource, and if you can make hundreds a day reselling the same parking spot and can find a way to just go dump people’s cars wherever without any recourse, best bet it’s not going to take long for every shady lot owner to get in on the scam
Putting a no parking sign in front of a car already legally parked. That is a classic move by Rosco P. Coltrane 🤣🤣🤣 I know I saw that on The Dukes of Hazzard at least once.
Put a $1 stamp on your title/registration and autograph (not a signature) across the stamp, this makes you the postmaster and your car is now mail, subject to up to 5 years in prison: _18 U.S. Code § 1708 - Theft or receipt of stolen mail matter generally_ Also include a notice of rental agreement, that anyone that takes your property for whatever reason without first receiving express written permission, they agree to a rental fee of $1000 per day, for any part of a day.
I'm from New York City and have experienced this "curtesy tow" a couple of times but not like THIS. Before the car was towed, a piece of paper was inserted into the wiper notifying the owner of the car that it would be towed at a preset time to a nearby area for whatever reason, usually road work or some kind of pipeline work. But it's usually within a 3-5 block radius.
Also, are you going to do a video on the recent Michigan virtual court case where the abuser & victim in the same house? The prosecutor noticed something was odd how the victim was acting while the defendant seemed to be making directive motions.
In the City Of Baltimore, there is a similar system of relocating cars. This is only done under extreme circumstances however. If your car is legally parked and a heavy snowstorm happens, it may be relocated to plow the street. Also if there is an emergency such as a fire, water main break, gas leak etc. , cars that are in front of or near the scene will be towed so that the cars are out of harms way. The city usually tows them to one of the sports stadiums parking lots and there is no charge to get them back unless the car is on the boot list or has invalid tags/registration or other violations.
I have an all-in-one printer/scanner/fax in my house, with a magicJack internet phone adapter connected to it. So I have a fax machine in my house with it's own phone number. The magicJack costs $35 a year and I don't use it very often, but when I need it, it's pretty handy to have. This story is another reason I have never lived where I have to park on the street.
I had a courtesy tow in Chicago (last century) and fortunately they towed it to a legal spot. Back then, civil servants weren't trying to build profit - I do not know about today. I did my time in the city.
I had a similar issue a bunch of years ago. The West Lafayette, IN police towed one of my cars that was parked behind my house because it had a flat tire. I wasn't a car that I drove every day so I didn't realize it had a flat tire. I went and retrieved the car and of course had to pay for towing, storage, etc. I looked up the law that was cited for towing it, and it said something about inoperable cars attracting vermin. But it said that the car would be towed if it was inoperable AND unlicensed. (I guess that the license plate scares away all of the vermin.) In any case, since the car was licensed, and therefor protected from vermin, I filed a suit in small claims court against the city and the towing company. Well, it turns out, not being a lawyer, I didn't know that you had to get permission from the city before suing them, so that was thrown out. But, it turns out that the towing company charged me more than what was specified in the law, so I at least got a refund for part of the towing company charges. After the suit, the towing company told me I was on their blacklist and they would never tow my car again. So, I supposed that if the police ever wanted to tow my car again, these guys would pull up and then tell the police "that guy is blacklisted, there is no way that we're going to tow him". I guess that would be good for me!
I got towed in Richmond. There was a no parking sign but I was there after the no parking window. I had to call a friend to pick me up and then another friend to get my car the next morning. Pay 105 to get my car. I went to city hall to schedule the hearing. Spend 2hours in ct to get it dismissed. then had to go back to the tow yard to get my 105 back. What a hassle.
I’ve been hanging temp No Parking placards for years. They only need to be put up at least 24 hours before. I write the permit numbers etc on the placard to help identify stuff like this.
My dream car stereo system. 8-track, 8-track cassette adapter, cassette CD adapter, CD player and connected to an mp3 player. I may need to update this insanity...more wires!
Baltimore used to do the same thing all the time. You could pay to get your car back admitting that the fee was warranted, or you could fight it in court. You would succeed in court and the court would order the towing fees and fines eliminated, but you'd still be on the hook for a $100/day storage fee. The judges would always state that while you hadn't broken the law (thus no fines), you had used the city's impound lot for storage for the number of days it took before you could get a hearing, thus you owed that money which was often higher than the towing fee and fines. I don't know if they still do it, but I would assume so. One of the many reasons I don't go into Baltimore anymore.
I grew up in the shadow of Philadelphia. As a kid we would drive in multiple times a week the different different portions of the city for doctors appointments and parental visits for my foster siblings. The early 90s through the mid 2000s were in spectacular but in the administration of the city has fallen off the cliff since then. It provides nothing that I personally can’t get elsewhere so I’ve just refused to do business or any kind of entertainment that takes me within the limits.
Abt towing and the city of federal way washington. July 2nd 2014 from the end of my driveway. Seems it went to auction, but to this day it's still in my name out there somewhere. I ain't forgot you Travis, just ain't got around to you yet.
Yeah, I got courtesy towed in Chicago when a film crew needed to reshoot (Drinking Buddies, I think it was) and needed to park catering trucks. Man, did that piss me off.
In Troy NY, the city decided that everyone had a right to a parking spot in front of their own house. This resulted in neighbors calling for tows on neighbors and visitors if they parked in front of the wrong house. Anyone could call for a tow on any car in front of their house even if there was plenty more space for their own car.
