Towing Companies a Menace To Richmond Drivers
by Robert Russo
A democracy is supposed to allow a private citizen to fight government corruption, or through civic action fight special interests and big business, but what happens when government and corporations work together to bilk the public? Welcome to Richmond, the crossroads of capitalism.
Classifieds are a great way to find a deal on a used vehicle, especially if one is in financial straits or has little time to spare. (After all, free press is an entitlement just as doing friendly business, so long as it doesn't actually hit the road.) Typically the car is available for purchase after working hours, and the seller wishes to keep his tags saying how easy it will be to get new ones transferred by the DMV in the morning. Then the car which has probably been sitting there for months is driven away into a gauntlet of uniformed and private sharks. If it is not pulled over on the way home, an urban resident must choose between having it towed from his parking space overnight for not having a sticker, or from the street for not being registered yet. If the buyer put his own plates on the car he can expect them to be confiscated and destroyed. This can be made worse by the fact that the buyer has no other means of transportation, and the unknown quality of privately bought vehicles in the first place.
Perhaps the police think a sale goes something like this: The first thing a buyer does is call a tow truck to have the car moved to the DMV because an unregistered car can't be driven. Or this business about going to the DMV before the sale and registering a car that hasn't been purchased yet. This was the recommendation I received on Friday when this happened to me, before paying $115 to get my new vehicle back and $75 to replace the plates and title. I should note that when my old vehicle broke down in the first place, a tow truck did not arrive to help me until four hours later.
When looking at the boom in towing companies since 1995 (when towing became unregulated) and abuse of this franchise one finds that Northern Virginia saw the full circle of this gambit before Richmond (probably because of the massive amount of DC commuters and parking), from which Rep. Jim Moran of Arlington founded the State and Local Predatory Towing Enforcement Act, which failed nationally but then partially succeeded as an earmark and local ordinance followed in 2006.* This predatory behavior includes housing developments making arrangements with towing companies to remove resident cars overnight (i.e. for having one wheel over the line) in exchange for a cut of the profits,** hiring private snitches to peruse the streets for similar kickbacks, charging holding fees for the time the yard was closed (i.e. on Sunday), and tow trucks cherrypicking vehicles downtown waiting for the moment the meter has expired or watching to make sure the driver actually enters the store he has parked at, not releasing the chain until the driver pays cash.*** Arlington Del. Bob Brink says of his colleague "He cited one case of a company with four tow trucks that was able to remove 12 cars from a parking lot in front of a bar in twenty minutes. When a citizen reported this to the Association, they called the owner of the trucks who told them in no uncertain terms what they could do with their reprimand."****
Last April a state bill was finally approved by Gov. Kaine, establishing a board to regulate the towing industry.***** This is just the tip of the iceberg however. The problem is not just that companies exceed their bounds, those responsibilities themselves must be reduced. Imagine if law enforcement required the services of your company so that its financial future was guaranteed for life, but with a binding contract that required you to be on call to confiscate people's livelihood and deal with their anguish. By passing on enforcement to a private business, police can issue fines at the price of profit. The contractor has to obey and the state can't prevent them from being paid. It's like hiring a thug to push people around so that if they resist, it violates his rights. Hampering these contracts would put a major curb on the enforcement of victimless road violations and force cops to be more lenient. For details of the current regulations go to http://www.namic.org/insbriefs/060522VaTowing.pdf.
*http://www.arlingtonva.us/Departments/Communications/6009.aspx
**http://www.dailyping.com/archive/2000/08/07/
***http://dls.state.va.us/pubs/legisrec/2005/sjr330c.htm
****http://www.bobbrink.org/february15_04.php
*****http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:tSj5Fjc3ARQJ:www.namic.org/insbriefs/060522VaTowing.pdf+Virginia+towing+legislation&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=5&gl=us&ie=UTF-8
Question of the Week: Do you have any horror stories to share about your experience with a towing company? Send them to henrico@richmondliberty.org.