Flickr.com PhotoHillsborough County, Florida, is contemplating a law to crack down on predatory towing companies, according to this article, (click here) and the sensible proposal has caught the attention of state legislators who represent Hillsborough County...
Word is NUMEROUS COMPLAINTS about "patrol towing" in front of restaurants and bars has sparked the proposal, and the proposed bill would allow the county's Transportation Commission to "go after these guys and take their license away," alleviating a tremendous enforcement burden on the Tampa Police Department and the sheriff's office.
Hopefully, the Transportation Commission would be open to some other ideas...like transparency in the towing process, with vehicle data available on the internet. Once the big, ugly problem of aggressive "patrol towing" is licked, one begins to see a plethora of smaller issues associated with towing, issues which also need solving.
Beyond the City of Tampa, there is the rest of Florida to consider. I don't know if anybody outside of Orlando was paying attention to the ugly situation in that city, but links to a number of articles about that situation were collected on this blog. Clearly, Florida's problem is bigger than Tampa or, for that matter, Tampa as well as Orlando.
The blog of Sean Cruz in Portland, Oregon cries out against the practice of "patrol towing," which is actually against the law in both Washington State and Oregon, according to Cruz. Maybe the State of Florida will soon follow suit. I hope so.
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