Citizens Use Internet To Get Even With Retriever Towing, Portland, Oregon

Flickr.com Photo, Portland, OR

I've mentioned the tactic before in previous blog posts, including this one about the situation with Lone Star Towing in Texas, click here. When a company is engaged in predatory towing, upset citizens can just go to sites like "Merchant Circle" and pour in negative reviews, plus...

...they can publish useful information about whatever controversy is causing citizens to become so upset in the first place. This kind of information enlightens others, instead of just being a worthless spleen venting and outpouring of expletives, without explanation about WHY people are so mad at the company in question.

Right now, Retriever Towing of Portland, Oregon is on the receiving end of such an outpouring of enlightened consumer fury. Check out the reviews posted at City Search, click here.

One poster is actually suggesting boycotting businesses who use Retriever Towing. As of today only one person had posted a review to "Merchant Circle," but now the total is, shall we say, up to two, click here.

Also, there are seven reports about Retriever Towing at Rip Off Report Dot Com, but I'm hoping the total will soon be eight; since I submitted one.

From Spontaneous Uprising To Planned Protest (America Wakes Up To Predatory Towing)

Photo By John Hoff, "Poor People's March"

Perhaps there have been other planned, coordinated protests against predatory towing incidents prior to one recently announced in Oregon...by somebody posting under the label "napd" on the blog of Sean Cruz, click here.

Yes, possibly. I haven't heard of any sign-waving, slogan-chanting examples, but I admit it's possible there have been a few, most likely on some campus.

But as an activist and a relentless life-long do-gooder, I'm pretty familiar with various social movements and how they evolve. What I'm observing now is an interesting, predictable development in social consciousness and activism around the issue of predatory and abusive towing, as some of the more informed people in the country...

...make the transition from merely waking up to predatory towing to actually doing something about it. Therefore, I see it as the duty of this blog to repeat and amplify the "call to protest" announced on the blog of Sean Cruz.

Here is the call to protest, such as it is, pretty much verbatim...though I eliminated the "all caps" in the body of the original posting:

TO ANYBODY OUT THERE WHO MAY WANT TO HELP/GET INVOLVED,

I'm working on a formal letter to the governor, with cc to the mayor, attorney general, city and state police department regarding Retriever Towing and I need as many signatures as possible.

I'm also in the process of organizing a peaceful march early in January. The plan is to start from their site under I-405 and march to City Hall. (By "their site," the poster apparently means Retriever Towing)

I will provide more info by end of next week with additional info as soon as the letter is ready and plans are better defined.

We need to create awareness not only about the obvious public health and safety issue that this represents but also the economic impact on unaware businesses under contract with them (Retriever Towing, I assume) and how this scares customers away from their premises.

Does anyone know about other property managers canceling their contracts with them, or business owners with similar concerns or dissatisfied with their service? It is clear now how unregulated industries and special interests can drive an entire economy down. We need to take action.

The Spark That Ignited Involvement

Our family car was towed with our nephew's asthma medication and car seats in it. Our family was stranded in the rainy weather for an hour and Mr. Coe (of Retriever Towing) himself denied access to the car before payment was made which I understand is required by law.

(A side note, here. Check out Minnesota's proposal for a "let people get their stuff" law, click here. I'm still trying to find out if it became law or not)

They put us in their known"time out" and made us wait even longer (they used to charge customers for this) The police were called and upon arrival they acknowledged knowing about Retriever Towing having out-of-control predatory towing practices, but said they couldn't do much about it. We still had to pay first despite our plea regarding the urgency of the medication and car seats.

If Retriever Towing can tow a police car in Gresham responding to a 911 call, ignore a request from a police officer in Wilsonville responding to a call by a domestic violence victim, disregard common sense, public safety and many more instances that can be found with a simple Google search (even in the national news) and are frequently in the local news, (then) it is time to do something more than just posting outrage on a website or waiting for the government to get involved.

Citizens In Open Insurrection
A few weeks ago, the Oregonian reported on a woman and an angry mob who set a Retriever truck on fire and who was arrested on a 220k bond. That's just another example that public outrage with this confrontational tow company is leading to more and more violence. Hoepfully, the government will get involved soon.

I'll provide more information later.

What Will Happen In Oregon?

It will be interesting to see whether there really will be a protest march, and what will come of that. I'll certainly try to report on it, and I've forwarded a request for pictures, information if and when it happens.

However, even the mere CALL for a protest march represents a kind of evolutionary development with the social issue of predatory towing.

Oregon Continues To Be A "Predatory Towing Theme Park" Filled With Abused Citizens

Flickr.com Photo

There is no end to the predatory towing abuses in Oregon, which recently included a domestic violence victim "re-victimized" by the infamous "Retriever Towing" outfit. Fortunately...

...Oregon has Sean Cruz, who stays on top of these issues and constantly brings up the need to ban "patrol towing" in Oregon, like California and Washington State have already banned the practice. Sean's recent blog post, click here, included a bunch of URLs with information about the ongoing saga with Retriever Towing.

(I've encouraged Sean to use "live links" with his blog, a practice which requires only a slight bit of technical know-how)

Here are some highlights from Sean's material which I'd like to highlight:

* According to an article in the Oregonian, click here, there was a "predatory towing uprising" incident, which included an angry crowd and an attempt to set fire to the tow truck, with the vehicle owner under arrest. My blog has been attempting to document these uprisings, like the one in at Abbey Court in Carrboro, North Carolina, which seems to have been the Lexington and Concord of this widening rebellion.

This type of citizen-led "direct action" seems to be picking up steam at the same time the public becomes more enlightened about the concept of "predatory and abusive towing" through efforts like those of Sean Cruz and Towing Utopia.

I do not advocate violence. I certainly do advocate protest.

* Sean Cruz wrote about another incident, reported by KATU, in which a driver for Sergeant's "tow jacked" the car of a woman in labor, click here for article.

The comments section of this article is quite notable, with some individuals actually emailing the company in question and then posting the response on the comments thread. This is a great example of the sub-blogosphere in action, and actually adding useful information to public discourse...for a change.

* Sean Cruz points out "the 2007 Oregon Legislature, under the leadership of Senator Avel Gordly, imposed regulations on patrol towing that have yet to be fully implemented, particularly by local governments."

Towing Utopia says: WAKE UP, LOCAL OREGON GOVERNMENTS! REGULATE PATROL TOWING!!!!

* Cruz points out two truck drivers must provide "their prospective victims" with a printed rate sheet so there is "no confusion about the amount of ransom demanded." If this isn't happening, folks in Oregon need to notify the Oregon Attorney General's Office.

* In wording very similar to the "manifest" of this very blog, Sean points out "the towers demands are often confiscatory in effect. Loss of vehicle is a penalty far beyond what is just for the 'offense' that may or may not have been committed by the vehicle owner."

Indeed. That is why citizens should be going into court and suing to have whole bodies of state towing laws overturned on constitutional grounds, whether state or local. YES, there is a time and a place for non-consent towing. But it must be regulated and transparent, with emerging technology used across the spectrum of the "towing life cycle" to make sure nobody needs to say "Dude, where's my car?" and not have an answer for days.

Note: the photo above is of a tow truck driver in Oregon, but is for illustration purposes only. No implication is intended that the driver was engaged in abusive towing practices.

Anatomy Of A Portland Towing Empire Of Greed

Flickr.com Photo

In the state of Oregon, Sean Cruz continues to lead the fight against predatory towing, not just by digging up facts himself but by providing a forum for those with inside information to come forward and spill the beans.

Click here to read all the dirty details about how Mr. Gary Coe has created an empire of automotive misery, owning a grubby stake everywhere in the "towing to auto auction life cycle." Airing information like this...

...may allow individuals in other parts of the country to begin to perceive patterns in their own neck of the woods.

Great work, once again, by "Blogolitical Sean."

Portland Towing Scam Abuses The Handicapped--Sean Cruz Exposes It!

Flickr.com photo

I only recently found out about Sean Cruz and all his work in Oregon, which I blogged about in this post. Well, it turns out a predatory towing issue Sean was banging the drum about recently made some media march to battle to expose a shocking abuse of handicapped citizens happening in Portland. Here is the article..

...which shows every sign of being a result of Sean's handiwork from his original blog post about the outrageous scam, click here.

The long and the short of the scam went like this: There was a restaurant named McCall's, and it was no longer in business. But the restaurant's parking lot had some handicapped spaces, and a guy named Mike Meier, a paraplegic, parked there with his handicapped permit properly displayed. And he got towed...for not having a "special McCall's permit," or so he was told.

It turns out the towing company, Sergeants Towing, had been hauling vehicles away from that spot for half a year without any legal authority to do so.

Yes, Sergeants Towing once had a contract to patrol that particular parking lot...Oregon being the only one of the three West Coast states which even ALLOWS "patrol towing"...but the contract was no longer valid. The business which had contracted with the towing company wasn't even in that building anymore.

Think Of It As "Mineral Rights" To The Steel In Your Car

Tim Barrett, who focuses on predatory towing in the State of Oregon and has worked closely with Sean Cruz, says unscrupulous towing companies who are engaged in "patrol towing" look upon these contracts as "mineral rights." Even if the business which granted the "right" to patrol the lot ceases to exist, predatory towing companies see the lots as their "turf" and continue to tow cars...even when the lot is virtually empty! And, as it turns out, even towing from the handicapped spots.

Well, now Sergeants will have to pay back all that money. And it all happened because a paraplegic man STOOD UP FOR HIS RIGHTS and wouldn't let go of the issue for FIVE MONTHS. His hunch said something was wrong, and he wouldn't let go of that hunch.

Mike Meier, you the man.

A "Towing Ordeal" In Oregon Blogged About By "Sophie"

Photo From Sophie's Blog

"Sophie" sounds like a very nice woman, and we share a common interest of "re-purposing" cast off treasures. Who would be mean to somebody like Sophie? A nasty towing company called "Beaverton Towing," that's who...

In between discussions about antiques and her ordinary life, Sophie's blog tells a sordid, bloody tale about "the parking lot of doom" and her spontaneous crusade to get justice after a case of predatory towing. Click to the left for one of the most vivid entries, then use the search term "towing" on Sophie's blog to find all the ugly details.

Sophie's (layperson) attempt at legal research produced a classic bureaucratic runaround, and a discovery that a supposed "federal law" to protect citizens from predatory towing doesn't do much of anything...except allegedly empower states to do something. If they want. When they get around to it. Yawn. Nappy time.

On the one hand, the digging which went into my last handful of posts tell me Oregon is a predatory towing theme park. But on the other hand, I've discovered there are activists and journalists vigorously exposing these issues in Oregon...is it possible Oregon is no better and no worse than a lot of other places, but some folks in Oregon are awake and aware? I hope that's actually the case.

A New Towing Company Trick In Portland, Oregon

Photo By John Hoff

Just when I thought I'd heard every low-down, dodgy artifice (some) (unsavory) towing companies use, something surprising comes out of Portland. There, a towing company was playing "musical piece of (expletive) cars" on the public streets...

It can all be found in this article from The Mercury--a wonderful publication, though eerily similar to Seattle Weekly and The Stranger. (I suspect there are some strong ties between these publications, old faves from my Seattle days in the 1990s)

But back to Portland: there, a towing company slash salvage-yard-starter-kit basically turned public streets into its own private storage area for junkers. Nice. Portland, Oregon is beginning to sounds like a theme park of predatory and abusive towing issues.

As for the picture...it's a car my brother was hauling off for scrap. My son and his little cousins thought it would be fun to set off smoke bombs on the vehicle and make it look like it was burning up just as my brother walked out of the house.

The Face Of Predatory Towing Abuse Activism In Oregon--Sean Cruz

Image From The Blog Of Sean Cruz

I learned of Sean Cruz from an article in the Portland Mercury, which discussed how a towing company mistakenly and REPEATEDLY towed his legally parked vehicle. Most people would be forced to passively endure, or perhaps complain to a public official, but Sean Cruz...

...was the Chief of Staff for State Senator Avel Gordly, Democrat, Northeast Portland. So LEGISLATION came out of what might otherwise be nothing but a private and infuriating burden to bear.

Now, besides many of the other issues dear to him, such as the rights of Latino workers, Cruz blogs quite a bit about the predatory towing issues in which he is entangled, such as this recent post entitled "Urgent Portland Predatory Towing Alert! Sergeant's Towing running tow scam on public property!"

As I try to stitch together a blog to cover predatory towing issues on a NATIONAL scale, it is amazing to discover these highly developed pockets of resistance in places like Carrboro, North Carolina or a longtime crusader like Sean Cruz. Predatory towing is real, but so is spirited resistance to predatory towing practices.

"Hero Lessons" In Portland, Oregon

Flickr.com Photo

According to an oldie-but-goody article in the Portland Mercury, becoming a hero is easy. Just take on the predatory practices of the towing companies like Portland City Commissioner Randy Leonard did...

Here is the article (click here) and I'd have to say the advice is very sound. From Orlando, Florida to West Lafayette, Indiana, to the nearly-revolutionary situation in Carrboro, North Carolina, all discussed on this blog, the same pattern emerges: politicians who take on "big fat meanie" towing entities end up smelling like a rose in terms of public opinion. The fact the cause is just and the politician will be on the side of the angels is just gravy to pour on top of the public opinion polls.

So why don't MORE politicians try this tactic? Well, if I keep getting the word out through this blog...maybe more politicians might! And by the way...Randy Leonard is still a commissioner, which is further proof of how well the tactic pays off.

(And yes, I have been spending a lot of quality time with the Portland Mercury in these last few blog posts. We're very happy together, thanks.) Here is another great article from that publication about how Portland's commissioners decided to cap towing fees.

P.S. The image is Portland Oregon's "Copper Lady," second largest copper statue in the world; the first being the Statue of Liberty.

Take My Liberty...But Leave Me My Car In Portland, Oregon

Flickr.com Photo

The content of this blog rests beneath a kind of thesis, visible on what might be called the "masthead" of this website: in modern America, it is often preferable to lose a day or two of freedom than to lose your vehicle.

A sad story from Portland, Oregon drives this point home...

Contia Orsby, 58, was living in her vehicle after a series of hardships that were NOT her moral fault, including being injured while working in a nursing home. (She attempted to keep a man in his 90s from falling, a common enough way to get injured while working this kind of job) Orsby ended up living in her car, and made the mistake of using a pair of brass knuckles as a "key ring."

To me, that makes sense if you're a 58-year-old woman desperately living in your vehicle and waiting for the Social Security Administration to decide, yup, you really do have slipped discs in your back, just like all the doctors say. Police doing a so-called "welfare check" called the brass knuckles a "concealed weapon." But (and here is the key sentence in the whole story) "instead of taking her to jail, they towed her car."

Why? Because towing a car is usually a much more draconian punishment than a night in jail (like I've been saying since Day One, Blog Entry One) but Americans lack the legal and constitutional protections for their VEHICLE which they have for their HOUSE or their PERSON.

As a result of this tow in lieu of arrest, Orsby spent six weeks sleeping outside. Good thing Oregon is much more temperate than Minnesota. Only through the intervention of a church did she manage to get her vehicle slash home back...with some serious delay caused by the authorities losing her keys, then wanting Orsby to pay to have the piece-of-junk 1988 rekeyed.

(No offense to Orsby...my 1988 was a piece of junk, and I just recently rid myself of it, click here)

The previous blog post just put Oregon on the towing utopia map, but now I see the state has been making up for lost time. Thanks, once again, to The Mercury for this informative piece about Orsby's ordeal. (Click here)

P.S. Yes, the Flickr.com illustration was indeed taken in Portland, Oregon.

Predatory Tow Trucks Have Been Too Busy In Beaverton, Oregon

Flickr.com Photo

Once again, the blog-o-sphere is coming through with detailed documentation of predatory towing, this time at a strip mall in Beaverton, Oregon...

According to a blog called "The Mercury," (click here) there is a tricky situation where the lot appears to be "common parking" for a bunch of neighboring businesses, but tow trucks are making distinctions about where vehicles park versus which particular businesses are patronized...plus it's a "tow at will" situation rather than based on individual complaints.

And speaking of complaints...I have a minor one about this otherwise informative blog entry. The blog doesn't name the business in question, opting instead to censor the business name like an expletive with a row of asterisks. (****)

I say NAME THE NAMES of businesses which engage in predatory towing, like I've done in previous blog entries, like this one.

But otherwise I'm pretty happy, because Retriever Towing in "Busy Beaverton" just put Oregon on the predatory towing map.

P.S. I know what you're thinking: Why does this beaver have red teeth? Well, I hope I've made it clear there is something PREDATORY happening, here, and this creepy beaver image from Flickr.com reflects as much.