Police Refuse To File Charges Against Kidnappers of Toddler

A 4-year old child was injured recently when repo agents towed away his mother's car with him in it!

Trying to avoid being carted away by the careless repo agents, the young boy, Fashawn Parker, leapt from the moving vehicle and required treatment for minor injuries at a nearby hospital. Police said there would be no charges filed as they claimed the repo agents checked the back of the truck and did not see the boy.

I'm sorry, but the repo agents need to be arrested and so do the cops who failed to arrest them. You can find plenty of stories about careless repo and tow drivers. For example, this one where an elderly woman pulled over in a no stopping zone due to a health emergency and lost consciousness. A tow truck towed the car to the impound lot, did not report the tow to police, and left the woman in her car overnight, in freezing temperatures.

Another good one is this one. A guy's roommate wakes him up at 3:45 A.M. and tells him his car's being towed. A repo driver towed his car by mistake because it was the same color as the one on the tow order. Different model, different make, different year... but the same color. They caught up to the tow driver, forced him to return it, and called the police. The police refused to arrest anyone or charge it as a theft.

But this seems to be the general attitude of the police toward illegal tows. I once had an incident where my car was illegally towed off private property by a towing company that convinced my stupid apartment complex managers that it was necessary. I called the police and they said it was a civil matter, despite the fact that the tow company did not get proper authorization and their reason for the tow was one that required the police to order the tow (which the police did not).

So I sued. My apartment managers settled for enough to cover my out of pocket expenses. For the towing company, I went to court, claiming two violations of the vehicle code (California 22658.k and 22658.l). I won on both and was awarded 4x the towing and impound charges on each. Add on court fees and my total judgement was $1079 against the towing company... which promptly went out of business and changed its name to avoid the judgement (my bad for not naming the owner as a co-defendant).

It has been my experience that, in general, the towing industry is full of lazy, borderline criminal (if not fully criminal) jerks, and they go around abusing the public because for some reason no matter how carelessly they act, the cops never want to get involved. It's legalized car theft and extortion. And the willful dereliction of duty by the police in towing matters is so egregious, that they'll take the word of these scumbags that they looked in the car when they recklessly kidnap children and unconscious old ladies.

At bare minimum, these tow drivers need to be charged with reckless endangerment of a minor. At maximum, kidnapping should be added to the charges.

Tow drivers are not above the law. When depriving someone of their property, there need to be a lot more checks and balances and a lot more care taken, because when mistakes like these occur, they hurt innocent people. If anyone else wanted to sieze my property, the amount of paperwork necessary is beyond belief, but the states, the cities, and the cops give these towing companies a free pass.

It's corrupt, it's lazy, and it's wrong.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 9th, 2007 at 5:20 pm and is filed under Society.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.