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?

Auto Theft Using Tow Trucks In Charlotte, North Carolina (The Beginning Of A Disturbing Trend?)

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It happened in Charlotte, North Carolina but this kind of thing happens all over America. As the price of scrap metal and gas rises, you'll see a lot more of it.

And it's another argument for using more advanced technology so legitimate towing can be distinguished from sophisticated auto theft using tow trucks...

Here's what happened, according to a story on the local Channel 9 Eyewitness News. (Click here for a link to the original report)

Police said Wednesday night that tow trucks are the latest tools used to steal cars in Charlotte. Investigators said a number of cars have been stolen recently along North Tryon Street.

The most recent case happened at an Advance Auto Parts store on the 4500 block of North Tryon. Police say unmarked tow trucks pull up and then haul off the cars. Witnesses often just assume it's for a legitimate reason.

Channel 9 Eyewitness News spoke to a reputable towing company who told us the cars are probably picked up and then taken straight to a chop shop or scrapyard.

"Take it down to the scrapyard. Get money for it. Scrap salvage. Turn it right back into soda cans," said Ben Rudy with Hunter Towing.

OK, I just have to insert something here. Soda cans? Is he serious? More like Chinese-made stoves and toasters. Most soda cans are made out of aluminum. Cars are made out of steel. You don't have to be very bright to know THAT.

Police say all tow trucks should have some sort of indentification or contact number on the side of the truck. Because tow trucks can cost almost one million dollars, police don't think the thieves are amateurs. They are confident these crimes are being committed by people with access to a tow truck and the knowledge of how to use one. (End of article)

A million dollars apiece? That sounds rather inflated, even for the super-deluxe heavy duty tow trucks. And there's no indication here the plain and unmarked vehicles in question were the super deluxe kind, which more often tow LARGE vehicles, anyway. I have to wonder if this wild-eyed million dollar estimate came from the same source who thinks stolen cars get made into soda cans.

All the same, a story is only as good as its sources and kudos to Channel 9 for bringing us information about this disturbing trend...likely to just get worse due to the rising scrap metal market.

So what is the answer, here? I think there needs to be better technology. If my car was being towed, right this minute, I should be getting an alert to that fact on both my cell phone and my email. In fact, I should get electronic alerts BEFORE my car gets towed, so I can run out and move the car if there is a problem.

Currently, it seems, anybody with a truck and a large metal hook can just go around grabbing cars. How did we get to this point? You didn't see it in the horse-and-buggy days. You didn't see it in the early days of automobiles. So why do we all just ACCEPT this situation of our cars (which are necessary for our very lives) being grabbed off the street with impunity?

What we are seeing in Charlotte, North Carolina will start happening in other cities. I've often driven along the highway, seen disabled cars by the side of the road, and thought, "What is to stop people from just pulling up with a truck and hauling off the cars?"

Well, it appears...nothing.

The Unkindest Cut Of All, "Comrade"

Photos by John Hoff

From each according to his abilities? To each according to his needs?

Not if it's the private parking space at May Day Books, in the "West Bank" area of Minneapolis! Park here and they will sic the capitalist towing company on you.

Comrade.

(Do not click "Read More")

Outrageously Bad Behavior By A Towing Operator In Orlando, Florida

Flickr.com photo, Universal Studios, Orlando FL

Though the story here doesn't involve "non-consent" towing, it seems apparent tow truck drivers who engage in outrageous behavior in one category will turn right around and do the same thing in another category of towing. In this case, we're talking about a literal felon who did time for grand theft auto...

According to a local "consumer affairs" columnist who writes for the Orlando Sentinel, a tow truck company run by John Warrington scratched a guy's expensive car, promised to pay for it through insurance, then played one game after another to avoid paying a dime. It's not surprising, since Warrington did five years in a Florida prison for false personification (sic), grand theft motor, (sic) and multiple counts of check fraud.

There are so many reforms needed in the towing industry. A good place to begin would be not allowing convicted felons to be tow truck drivers or own tow truck companies.

(My only bit of critique or feedback about the article: if the columnist says he's going to "posterize" somebody, then there needs to be a kind of "poster" illustration with an image of the person's face. If no image is available, well, have a cartoonist make some kind of caricature!

Get enough "posterized" bad guys and maybe you'd have enough to make a deck of cards. What a great fund raiser idea THAT could be!)

Twin Cities: An Awful System That Leaves A Citizen Distressed, Smarting and Insulted

Photo by John Hoff

Roadguy at the Star Tribune has a great blog, and in January, 2008 he hosted a substantive discussion about "parking in a friend's space, an expensive cautionary tale....

Some of the things citizens had to say on Roadguy's blog were quite articulate and heartfelt, including the "system summary" which is the title of this blog.

The stories there really woke me up to another towing trend. It is apparently quite common for an apartment resident to tell a friend "you can park in my space" and then the friend gets towed. I'm sure more than one friendship has been ruined over this kind of thing.

It's another good argument for using the technology to "ping" auto owners so they will get word of an impending tow. Maybe, in this case, they could even talk to their apartment manager and say, "No, that's my friend. I WANT her to be in my space."

Of course, read the fine print. Some leases say you can't let anybody else use your parking space. What a messy noodle bowl of issues. Who knew?

The last comment was, of course, exactly what you'd expect: a tow truck driver jumping in to get the last word and insulting citizens who dared to complain.

He also says he can hooked a car and make off with it in 40 seconds. I say let's time you, big talker, my money against yours.

The Name "Cedar Towing" Keeps Coming Up

Flickr.com, "Parking Ticket Make Hulk MAD!"

I'm sure we all experience times when we don't "put 2 and 2 together" right away and we get mad and kick ourselves. That happened to me with a company called Cedar Towing...

I mentioned a while back about how Cedar Towing was the subject of neighborhood concern at the meeting which took place on the West Bank, in a mosque. (Click for link)

Well, just today I was on the blog for "Road Guy" from the Star Tribune, and naturally I was searching for stuff about "towing" (naturally) and I saw an old article from Minnesota Monitor about the city council proposal to cap fees for non-consent towing.

Yes, I saw that article when it first came out, but for some reason I looked it over again and something new jumped out at me. Here is an excerpt:
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Al Garcia, an attorney for Cedar Towing, handed out a list of expenses that go into the magic number, things like fuel, taxes and payroll. But the breakdown was vague enough that it raised more questions from the committee than it answered. Said Council Member Don Samuels: "These figures don't mean anything."

People paying towing fines, as Council Member Paul Ostrow noted during the discussion, aren't "customers" in the traditional sense. When you leave your car where it's not supposed to be, you don't get to comparison shop which tow company hauls it off. So the only real incentive to maintain reasonable rates, it appears, is to avoid being so outlandish that too many angry tow victims call their council members to complain and demand action. And here we are.

Garcia argued the city's rate isn't an apples-to-apples comparison, because private towing companies have more expenses. Private impound lots, for example, are required to be open 24-hours-a-day and need to hold vehicles 45 days before auctioning them off. The city's lot isn't open all day and it can sell unclaimed vehicles after 15 days. Schiff moved to continue the towing discussion after the city can do more research about how private companies' expenses compare to those of the city.
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So who did I notice basically leading the political opposition to making any changes in the current structure? It was CEDAR TOWING, the same company the good folks at the "mosque meeting" were complaining about so pointedly. How is it their name keeps coming up, whether it is accusations of abusive towing practices or opposing reasonable changes?

Also, somebody on the "Road Guy" blog put it quite well. Private impound lots are required to be open 24-hours-a-day? That's news to him! That doesn't fit with his experience at all.

I wonder how many private impound lots are actually following that law? It might be fun to spend a bunch of time and effort to find out!

Oh, by the way...Road Guy's blog is great! It's not just all his Star Tribune columns, but unique content. To make life even sweeter, Road Guy is big into RIDING A BIKE! Who knew?

Just Like I Said Months Ago: A Towing Nightmare In St. Paul

Flickr.com photo, tow truck in St. Paul

OK, first of all, I called it a couple months ago and now the rest of the media is just catching up with the story. A parking nightmare is shaping up in St. Paul, which is automatically a TOWING NIGHTMARE if something doesn't change soon, like giving drivers individual electronic notification of an impending tow. (Modern, yes, but very feasible)

Here's a link to the Star Tribune article in question. There are some issues in the article which I would like to highlight and, shall I say, spin in my own special way...

...such as the fact the information about public input in the article is really good to see, especially in light of the frustrating experience I had there a couple months ago, and didn't I let the world know about THAT? Maybe some of that had an impact.

Anyway, there is a meeting on June 5 at the Goodwill/Easter Seals building, 553 Fairview Avenue North in St. Paul, and people can even call and leave their comments at 651-266-2776. I called and, yes, the line does work and is a specific line dedicated to gathering these comments. You won't get lost in a bureaucratic voice mail system.

In the article, the project leaders acknowledge "there won't be a perfect solution for everybody." Translation: some folks, particularly small business owners in Frogtown and Midtown, will have to be sacrificed in the name of progress. This is what happens when you're named FROG town. You get sacrificed, like a frog being dissected in biology class. (Here's a great opportunity to plug my periodic employer, Bio Corporation in Alexandria, Minnesota)

I'm all for progress, even if sacrifices need to be made. I want the light rail. I understand University Avenue will change and some of these businesses will have to move. Some businesses might close up or even go bankrupt. (Can't say I'm sorry to see the tattoo parlors and pawn shops find another place to go)

Yet the light rail will open up more opportunities than it shuts off.

ALL I ASK is that if you're going to create a bloody, ugly Darwinian proving grounds of survival-of-the-fittest in the competition for parking, toss in some solutions to make the situation less of a nightmare. Individual notification of impending tows, for example. Better ways to track where one's vehicle is in the system, including tracking the vehicle online. (Very useful late at night, when you're trying to figure out if you've been "towed or stolen."

Is this all so much to ask?