Citizens Scammed, Towed And Uncompensated In Birmingham, Alabama

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Here is a great story with lots of local color, about a "crawfish boil" that started out as a lot of fun...until a bunch of citizens got towed in a scam...

Click here for a link to the original story, reproduced below with comment.

Birmingham Parking Authority maintenance employee fired after being accused of orchestrating parking scam.

Thursday, May 08, 2008

By JEREMY GRAY

News staff writer

A maintenance worker with the Birmingham Parking Authority was fired, authority officials said, because he directed people to park on a private lot and collected fees from drivers attending the Schaeffer Eye Center Crawfish Boil on Friday.

Birmingham police identified the employee as Edward McCray. Parking authority executive director Lynn Thomas said McCray, who had been employed by the authority for several years, was on duty and using a parking authority vehicle at the time he collected money at 22nd Street and Seventh Avenue North. He then directed cars into a lot owned by the company that manages the Park Place housing community, Thomas said.

(How strange is it his name is "McCray?" Crawfish are also known as crayfish. Maybe everything in Edward McCray's life has been leading to this moment of crayfish notoriety. Did he do it for the sake of the crayfish. OK, it's doubtful. All the same...what an odd little coincidence!)

"He had no business going on private property. We have zero tolerance for stealing," Thomas said.

(How sad he feels the need to state that last part, like maybe it's a revision of the former "you can steal a little bit" policy)

Many people returned to the lot that evening to find their cars had been towed. Some reported paying $200 to retrieve their cars from an impound lot.

A co-owner of the company that towed cars that night said only about 40 cars were towed. Some victims of the towing put that number at more than a 100.

McCray was detained by police, said Birmingham police spokesman Lt. Henry Irby. He was arrested and charged with a misdemeanor related to outstanding traffic violations, Irby said.

McCray has not been charged in the Friday incident, Irby said, because none of the victims had come forward to police.

Several of the people whose cars were towed have said they gave money for parking to a person they thought represented the parking authority.

Carrie Boyce, an 18-year-old McAdory High School senior, paid $5 to park on the lot about 5:30 p.m. When she and her friends got ready to leave about 11 p.m., their car was gone.

Others, including Angela Taylor, followed a steady flow of cars that continued to enter the lot after police arrested McCray at 6:30 p.m. Cars still were being towed when she, her husband and three teenage sons left the Crawfish Boil about 11.

(Oh, my word. Despite learning of the scam, the authorities didn't try to stop the towing! And, to make matters worse, this "crayfish boil" was a charity event. Here is a link about the event, which really sounds like a lot of fun and helpful to a good cause)

"Why didn't someone put a chain back up or why wasn't someone there to tell people they couldn't park there?" Taylor said. "It just seems like such a rip-off. Anything would have been better than just towing all those cars."

On Saturday, the second day of the festival, the owners of the property opened the lot to the public.

LaVeeda Morgan Battle, attorney for the parking authority, said the matter is under investigation and she could not comment.

No provisions for reimbursing those whose vehicles were towed have been made by the parking authority, property owners, the towing company or the city of Birmingham.

Gordon Williams, co-owner of B&G Towing, which towed several of the cars, said any reimbursement would have to come from someone else.

Rick White, a spokesman for the property managers, said he did not believe they would be giving reimbursements because the money went to the towing company.

"The Birmingham Parking Authority is a separate entity, we don't have any liability," said Deborah Vance, Mayor Larry Langford's chief of staff. "They are not city of Birmingham employees. They are Birmingham Parking Authority employees."

Larry Ward, chairman of the parking authority board, said the issue could come up at the board's May 15 meeting. "The board will have to look at that."

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Well, as you might suspect, this matter did not just go away. Click here for a link to another article about this matter. (I'm undecided whether to call it a "controversy" or a "scandal" so I'm just going to label it a "rip off." Here is the text of that article, below, with commentary.

Click here for yet ANOTHER article about the scandal. As one woman put it, $200 is food for her family for a week. She has cried and cried over this.

The real question I have is not whether McCray guy is guilty and will be prosecuted. It certainly looks like it. The real question is who will be giving all these people back their towing fees? I plan to send a few emails and make some inquiries.

However, once again this is a good argument for more advanced technological systems so drivers could get "pinged" and warned of an impending tow. What happened here was the result of a scam, but with big events like the Schaeffer Eye Center Crawfish Boil (truly a monumental event!) there is plenty of opportunity for confusion when it comes to where people are allowed to park.

And what happens, then? A wonderful night turns into a serious downer. And if you're from out-of-town, would you ever want to attend an event in Birmingham again?