Photo by John Hoff, DinkytownThough taking an objective and even-handed tone, one can't help but notice how Joy Petersen's final article in Minnesota Daily exposed the overkill towing in Minneapolis, especially near the University where it is assumed student renters have no political power and won't fight back, even in (good lord) an election year!
I took things beyond the article and talked, myself, to one of the sources...
...to get his horror story. Here is what Martin Rugeroni says happened.
I was actually pretty (expletive) when I couldn't find my car and I found out it was towed without letting me know. I saw the signs (for street cleaning) Sunday night as I drove around for about 15 minutes trying to find a parking spot as close to my house as possible. When I finally found one, I thought I wouldn't have a problem because there were many other cars parked there as well.
The next day when I came back from class at around 5 in the afternoon I got my keys and went to bring my car in front of my apartment and why I got there it just wasn't there anymore.
I got really nervous and my first thought was that it got stolen. I tried to talk to people on the street to see if someone saw something, trying to find out if it was OK to park there or not, but nobody could help me.
So I started looking for towing company numbers and called them one-by-one until one finally told me if it was on the street it was probably the City of Minneapolis who towed it. I gathered information from on-line and called them.
For the first two hours or so nobody could help me out and one of the guys on the phone told me I should report it stolen because they didn't have it registered. Finally I decided to give it one more chance and call again after 30 more minutes went by. NOW THEY ADMITTED HAVING MY CAR and I had to ask a friend who was having a nice dinner with his girlfriend to give me a ride.
I got there and first they couldn't find it in their system AGAIN. So I got very nervous, but after a while they finally did find it and I had to pay almost $140 bucks to get it back, not counting the ticket I got.
They drove me to my car and I finally got back home.
Towing without a previous notice is something that should be changed because people don't have the money or the time to lose in something like this. If they are going to clean the streets they should allow parking in places where you usually can't park since they just TAKE AWAY HALF THE PARKING SPOTS THAT EXIST, so where are we suppose to park our cars?
Signed Martin Rugeroni
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My photo shows the Loring Pasta Bar in Dinkytown. Bob Dylan used to live on the second story. He also wrote for the Minnesota Daily.
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