Its sad but i dont even need the article anymore. The discussion up to here is easier to read and deeper. Paywall=article title becomes hacker news discussion topic
Hopefully they're shut down for good and people went to prison.
My fear is they'll pop back up under a different name and continue the same f*ckery.
That's what a scam auto auction place in South Chicago did. They had numerous BBB complaints and dozens of on-line horror stories.
The state attorney finally shut them down several years ago but it looks like they're back and in the same freakin' building in Harvey IL. Only now they're called First Marshall Auto Auction.
I've seen their ads on craigslist and flag them, but it's like playing whack-a-mole.
I assume there is some way to pierce the corporate veil and go after owner's private assets if they are continually operating in an illegal manner like this.
I had a tow truck company lie to the attendant and tell him there wasn't a parking pass on the car. The attendant knew me though and told this guy not to tow my car. I bet this happens all the time.
Vehicle based grifts are tough to deal with, especially with it being so trivial and cheap to reincorporate.
A friend in the business took one of the Chinatown busses off the road after they pulled up for inspection with the rear brakes on fire with bald tires and no mirrors. The unlicensed driver ran off into a cornfield and vanished.
He pulled it off again a week later in the same condition, with another LLC on the side (something like “harmonious dragon 2,llc). That time it was associated with a more serious crime and seized.
> Then there was poor Peter Salva, a construction worker who in 2015 was doing roof work when he noticed a couple of Lincoln Towing workers hauling away his truck. When he began climbing down, the workers unhooked his ladder. He fell and broke his leg
The ICC investigation, over the course of a year, identified over 800 violations, most involving making unauthorized tows --- often from places they had formerly had contracts but no longer did, or places where they claimed they had contracts but where no contract was on file with the ICC. Which squares with the general take on Lincoln Towing, which is that they're just a bunch of people in tow trucks looking to tow as many cars as they can.
Lincoln's defense: the ICC never told them they were violating the law.
What I learned from reading all the ICC filings: in Chicago, you need to file different contracts to tow on a "patrol" basis (where the tow truck spots the unauthorized car) vs. a request basis, where the customer asks you to have a car towed. Lincoln Towing didn't care about the distinction; the ICC did.
Also, they had drivers without licenses.
Honestly, I doubt the other Chicago towing companies are much better.
Their Wikipedia page is pretty funny; it's pretty clear that someone with an interest in Lincoln Towing has authored chunks of it.
Just allowing a towing companies to "patrol" would seem to invite bad choices.
After some rounds of bad towing companies / behavior Minneapolis passed some city ordinances that limited towing. There still are bad actors but a lot of the easier methods they can use are gone now.
One of my first jobs had a client who ran speed cameras for a state. On top of nothing being secure the guys there said to me that the amount of "traffic" always seemed to increase, I felt dirty just talking to them. One dude I ran into later at another company said he started looking for a new job as soon as he figured out their game.
The company got in trouble supposedly due to anonymous tipsters who knew some inside info to some news stations (for the record no it wasn't me, I didn't have anything).
I believe parent implies that with the increase of traffic naturally comes more speeding infractions that are then reported by those guy. I suppose they get a cut for each ticket so it's in their interest to "notice" an increase of traffic. Or to make it up.
I was involved in some networking so we were talking about how much traffic there was. The "traffic" was directly proportional to the number of tickets and processing them... traffic up, # of tickets up.
I got towed in Minneapolis on a Sunday because the Wisconsin DMV put a flag in the computer system for my license plate. The flag was to remind the Wisconsin DMV to make sure my address was updated next time I came in. The towing company refused to release my car until I was able to get the Wisconsin DMV on the phone with them (Monday afternoon) to verify that my registration was paid up (it was) and I still had to pay the impounding fee (~$200) and had to take 8 hours of vacation because I couldn't drive home Sunday night like I had planned and thus couldn't go to work on Monday.
That is what privatization of law enforcement with a financial incentive to “find crimes” leads to.
San Francisco towed my car and then lost it for 3 months. I called repeatedly and they insisted they didn't have it, and that I file a police report for it having been stolen. I got another car to replace it.
3 months later, Erin found it, while taking a walk past the impound lot on Harrison. They made her pay all 3 months of impound fees.
That's so frustrating!! Sorry you had to go through that :( There should be an easy way to dispute that sort of thing that doesn't require you to take a day off work. There seems to be a lack of checks and balances in US that leads to all sorts of bs scenarios. It's one of the reasons I don't miss the country.
I had my car stolen in San Francisco and had to pay to get it out. The city contracts out towing services and the contract doesn't say they can't charge for stolen cars, so...
The city made an effort to change this a few years back but stopped when they realized that they would have to pay the towing company a bunch of money from loss of revenue with the modified contract.
If you made a police report, make sure to amend it with any damages as well as towing fees suffered in case they catch the perpetrator. This will give you a basis for remediation.
Doesn't matter. I don't live in Minneapolis so to contest it I would have had to take another day off of work and spend a significant amount of time and money driving there to get $200 back.
Man that's bullshit. We need an agency / taskforce that can investigate that sort of thing and bring swift justice / reform without making the little guy suffer through the court system.
I mean a task force with authority to act quickly with incentives aligned purely with the average citizen. Something that doesn't require me to wait - they take it upon themselves to serve justice.
I actually just saw a local news report on someone breaking towing rules in Minneapolis a few nights ago. They got some city council people on TV even.
Various industry Ombudsman’s in Australia do an alright (but not perfect) job of this, for certain industries (like telco). And the ACCC is scary, too. I wish they worked quicker however, and were expanded to more industries.
It would help to be able to sue someone in small claims court for free, and through the mail or entirely online. Having to take time off from work that you can't take and pay money you don't have, in order to get $200 back, are just enough little barriers to prevent people from using the legal system that their taxes pay for.
The silver lining is that if enough people actually did sue in small claims court, it bleeds the beast in terms of forcing the company to spend time in court for each infraction.
If 100 plaintiffs sue 1 defendant, each plaintiff has to appear once. The defendant (or their paid agent) gets dragged in 100 times.
File a lawsuit in small claims court for your time and the fee. Not only do you get paid, you discourage this type of behavior. Disclaimer: IANAL, but I've successfully sued towing companies.
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
Placing the burden of time and attention onto the one-time victim to ensure that chronic bad actors don't continue is not the solution that you are looking for.
What exactly does the election process mean to you then? What value do you see in it if not something like this?
You have 2 choices. The first is the "always do it yourself" fix to other people's mistakes or intentional trespasses. The second is to have the "people in charge" do it for you in a sustainable manner, at scale.
The second option might include repeated litigation. I have no idea how it would work but making them pay more than they earn every time is a strong deterrent.
The election process can be summed up roughly as "Heads, I win; Tales, you lose."
You win the game by controlling who gets to run as a candidate. That way, no matter who wins individually, you still end up with a majority in the legislature who will support policies friendly to you. And you don't need 100% control; some dissenting candidates need to be allowed, to provide an veneer of legitimacy to the process, but not enough to actually sway the votes in Congress.
So many complaints about the system! Call your alderman, get it raised at city council. Local government can be responsive. Band with some others, hire a lawyer. Organize.
Is a functioning democracy a right or a duty?
Or I guess you can just complain and post comments.
There is no one running on such a platform. Because this is not one of the Big Issues pushed on us by mass media, it does not inspire the electorate to act. If you're not promising handouts for people who identify with your in-group, you're not getting anywhere in politics.
Who are you going to vote for? In the US to get elected for any public office you need external funding, and to raise that you need to demonstrate that you are willing to return favours. No, the swamp isn't going to support those who would drain it.
> the Wisconsin DMV put a flag in the computer system for my license plate. The flag was to remind the Wisconsin DMV to make sure my address was updated next time I came in
I will assume that a flagged car will always be impounded when found. I guess that's the point of flagging it.
If your car was impounded because you were flagged without breaking any rules maybe you can address that somehow. Since your registration was paid up, flagging you car seems excessive, especially when it was just as a "reminder". There must be a way people don't end up in this situation for a "reminder" flag. So you can work on your side to make sure others don't get flagged unless their car really needs to be impounded.
Unless you were you supposed to update your address and check in with them to remove that flag, especially before leaving the state. In which case some more care from your side is required.
I'm not saying "privatizing law enforcement" is good. To a hammer everything looks like a nail and when you pay that private company "per nail" you can bet that's what they'll find at every corner. But you can always grab the issue from your end and try to do something about it. Otherwise next time you might as well have the Police impound your car and pay them for the ride. Same difference.
I don’t mean to advocate vigilantism, but I’m going to:
1. Step one, file claim in small claims court, get your money back / recorded action against the towing company / etc.
2. Carry a tyre valve removal tool with you. Whenever you see one of the offending companies tow trucks parked, and either unoccupied, or the driver is distracted, remove the valves from as many of the trucks tyres as you can.
This shouldn’t damage the tyres, unless they are left deflated for a long period, and it’s extremely inconvenient.
Have the individuals involved charged with auto theft and have the entire company seized under civil forfeiture since they are making money off of auto theft. Basically give the company the same treatment that a poor minority would get by the legal system if they tried the same.
Also allow the use of force in defense of property wrongfully seized.
> Also allow the use of force in defense of property wrongfully seized.
Will not end well. The more aggressive towing companies in Atlanta send their operators out in pairs, wearing mirrored sunglasses, body armor and carrying sidearms like they're mercenaries. You're outmanned and outgunned.
It's like they know they're engaged in business that might upset people or something.
The police, with all their training, still shoot civilians accidentally. I really wouldn't want to test the how-not-to-shoot-civilians training of some wannabe-Blackwater towing goon.
I'm fairly sure in Minneapolis that they CAN'T tow because of short term registration issues due to city ordnance prohibiting just that. Might be worth reporting it to someone on the city council... provided you have time left.
The city council has shown interest in restricting towing (has done it) and just recently they had one of them on TV talking about towing bad actors.
There is a lot of cynicism further down the chain but it is just BS by people who don't know anything, as at least in Minneapolis politicians have taken action regarding towing.
In ancient Rome, the right to collect taxes in some provinces was contracted out. If you won the contract, you had to provide Rome with at least the amount you bid for the contract, but anything you could manage to collect beyond that was yours to keep. And if people failed to pay their taxes to you, you often had the right to enslave them in order to collect.
Further, to progress beyond quaestor (tax collector) in Roman politics a politician had to put on public games and such to win popularity (as an aedile). Where did those funds come from? Yep, excess taxes collected.
It's not unlike winning friends and donors for campaign funds by playing nice with wealthy special interests as a modern politician in order to progress up the ladder to national office and then continue to win re-election.
I bet you could do a decent job regulating it if they required photo documentation of the parking job and any posted signage to be submitted to the police with each tow. Somebody get on an app for that.
But... the city should just disallow coercive towing generally, unless it’s a public safety concern. Ticketing, fine, but roving packs of tow trucks really only add value to the towing companies. Having lived both in a city where it was nigh impossible to get towed and one where I was towed out of my own spot I could notice no difference in parking availability.
Ticketing can also turn in to a "roving packs" situation, by means of misaligned government incentives. At the end of the day, if someone does something wrong we should probably just take the fine and burn it.
Yeah, but at least with a fine you can contest prior to paying. If a car is seized most people don’t have the luxury of being car less for the length of the appeals process.
And the fines keep piling up. And the people who do the appeals know the tow company because they deal with them all the time whereas you're just a random person off the street so the appeal by default is skewed toward their favor.
Exactly this. Towing should never occur unless its blocking traffic or another safety issue, at least for a week after a notice. Nobody should park their car and have it towed the same day.
They're going to be back under a new business name for sure. They're tied into local politics and protected. My friend was a repo man and towed cars, and said lincoln was way worse about vehicles than even his owner's sleazy operation
In Indonesia, this kind of business is well known but in toll roads.
Having your car broken down is the least of your problem. They will come, drag your car to their affiliated workshop, charge you high fees, and then the workshop charges you high fees as well. You can refuse, but it involves lots of persistence.
This also used to be very common on the GRA, the motorway that runs around Rome (Italy). I was a victim of such a scheme once. If I remember well, the problem was finally solved due to the fact that at some point tow trucks were banned from the GRA altogether.
The tow is managed by your insurer. You get a fixed price or reduced price depending on your insurance. You get a toll free number and usually instructions not to trust random towers you didn’t call for.
My understanding is that official ACI[1] trucks, as opposed to private ones, are still allowed, if your car breaks down on the GRA your insurer will send an ACI truck
This is how it works on the Jersey turnpike but the IIRC right to tow people from a particular stretch of road on a particular day of the week is bid on like any other state contract (my details may be a little off but point is you can't call whatever company you want).
I've only lived in the city a couple years, very few of the people I've met own cars, and I still had heard of them and their notorious practices. There had to have been some corrupt connection for them to operate as long as they did.
Just another reason not to own a car in Chicago. I lived there for a few years and it's insane. City car taxes, outrageous parking expenses, high insurance rates, and predatory towing. No thanks. In fact I quit that city altogether and wouldn't care if I never see it again.
This kind of thing is a problem anywhere that there's not aggressive regulation and Seattle is pretty bad. At one point a partner was towed for parking in a handicap spot and she had handicap plates and a handicap placard. Similarly she was towed from in front of our house for not moving the car very frequently and towed for parking in a part-time lane at a forbidden time... before the forbidden time started. Once you're towed they got a motivation to up the fees by keeping your car as long as possible, so you're likely to run into very short retrieval hours (closed on the weekend) and fees over $200/day. It's a pretty effective racket as long as the city goes along with it and they're getting paid.
> Similarly she was towed from in front of our house for not moving the car very frequently
You are storing personal property on public property. Move your car according to the law, or pay to park it (in a lot or towing fee, I dun care). Entitled people are ridiculous.
I think op just meant that it was towed for an arbitrary time limit that was not defined. If they said a vehicle must be moved at least once a week there would be no complaint or confusion in the situation. I am down voting your comment because name calling did not add to the discussion for me.
I don't know about Seattle but in NYC there are street-cleaning rules that prevent you from leaving a car in one spot for more than several days, so that a street cleaner can come through.
More residential areas don't have this, though. Some homes have driveways and some buildings have garages. There's always a paid garage nearby or airport parking.
Obviously, private parking lots don't usually have this kind of rules, and you can leave your car as long as you want, assuming of course that you pay for it. If you have your own private parking spot, you can also leave it there. This 72 hour rule only applies to public street parking.
Regulation? It sounds like there was plenty of regulations already in place, they clearly violated them as was decided by the agency. They found 800 violations according to another comment. What more do you need?
The problem was they weren't enforced. As others mentioned in this thread, you can only operate this way as a business with political connections.
Regulations in themselves are never sufficient. They have to be practical and their utility measured based on the reality of the efficacy in real life. A hundred more rules for customers/businesses won't solve the deficiencies of government inefficiencies, corruption, and cronyism.
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[ 5.2 ms ] story [ 167 ms ] threadHopefully they're shut down for good and people went to prison.
My fear is they'll pop back up under a different name and continue the same f*ckery.
That's what a scam auto auction place in South Chicago did. They had numerous BBB complaints and dozens of on-line horror stories.
The state attorney finally shut them down several years ago but it looks like they're back and in the same freakin' building in Harvey IL. Only now they're called First Marshall Auto Auction.
I've seen their ads on craigslist and flag them, but it's like playing whack-a-mole.
https://abc7chicago.com/automotive/bbb-issues-warning-for-fi...
I assume they're just keep spooling up another LLC and continuing.
A friend in the business took one of the Chinatown busses off the road after they pulled up for inspection with the rear brakes on fire with bald tires and no mirrors. The unlicensed driver ran off into a cornfield and vanished.
He pulled it off again a week later in the same condition, with another LLC on the side (something like “harmonious dragon 2,llc). That time it was associated with a more serious crime and seized.
Chinatown busses in particular are very bad.
> Then there was poor Peter Salva, a construction worker who in 2015 was doing roof work when he noticed a couple of Lincoln Towing workers hauling away his truck. When he began climbing down, the workers unhooked his ladder. He fell and broke his leg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dF3q7o8Yjrg
http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?lyrics=9522
Funny that it's their license that's been revoked in this case. I'll believe it when they're actually gone (and not just reopened under a different name).Lincoln's defense: the ICC never told them they were violating the law.
What I learned from reading all the ICC filings: in Chicago, you need to file different contracts to tow on a "patrol" basis (where the tow truck spots the unauthorized car) vs. a request basis, where the customer asks you to have a car towed. Lincoln Towing didn't care about the distinction; the ICC did.
Also, they had drivers without licenses.
Honestly, I doubt the other Chicago towing companies are much better.
Their Wikipedia page is pretty funny; it's pretty clear that someone with an interest in Lincoln Towing has authored chunks of it.
After some rounds of bad towing companies / behavior Minneapolis passed some city ordinances that limited towing. There still are bad actors but a lot of the easier methods they can use are gone now.
The company got in trouble supposedly due to anonymous tipsters who knew some inside info to some news stations (for the record no it wasn't me, I didn't have anything).
At least some folks made good choices.
That is what privatization of law enforcement with a financial incentive to “find crimes” leads to.
Is that even legal?
3 months later, Erin found it, while taking a walk past the impound lot on Harrison. They made her pay all 3 months of impound fees.
The city made an effort to change this a few years back but stopped when they realized that they would have to pay the towing company a bunch of money from loss of revenue with the modified contract.
If 100 plaintiffs sue 1 defendant, each plaintiff has to appear once. The defendant (or their paid agent) gets dragged in 100 times.
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
You have 2 choices. The first is the "always do it yourself" fix to other people's mistakes or intentional trespasses. The second is to have the "people in charge" do it for you in a sustainable manner, at scale.
The second option might include repeated litigation. I have no idea how it would work but making them pay more than they earn every time is a strong deterrent.
You win the game by controlling who gets to run as a candidate. That way, no matter who wins individually, you still end up with a majority in the legislature who will support policies friendly to you. And you don't need 100% control; some dissenting candidates need to be allowed, to provide an veneer of legitimacy to the process, but not enough to actually sway the votes in Congress.
Is a functioning democracy a right or a duty?
Or I guess you can just complain and post comments.
If you've ever been to a city council town hall, or read a local newspaper in an area where it's a problem, this is brought up regularly.
You get coverage of an example of illegal activity in the news: https://6abc.com/news/alleged-tow-trap-caught-on-camera-in-s...
Response from local politicians: https://www.phillymag.com/citified/2016/05/24/illegal-towing...
Politicians seeking input from their constituents: http://phlcouncil.com/help-stop-predatory-towing
Leading to a new law: https://www.phillymag.com/news/2017/01/26/kenney-bill-illega...
With enforcement of the law: https://patch.com/pennsylvania/philadelphia/george-smith-tow...
I don't see any handouts or special interest groups here.
I will assume that a flagged car will always be impounded when found. I guess that's the point of flagging it.
If your car was impounded because you were flagged without breaking any rules maybe you can address that somehow. Since your registration was paid up, flagging you car seems excessive, especially when it was just as a "reminder". There must be a way people don't end up in this situation for a "reminder" flag. So you can work on your side to make sure others don't get flagged unless their car really needs to be impounded.
Unless you were you supposed to update your address and check in with them to remove that flag, especially before leaving the state. In which case some more care from your side is required.
I'm not saying "privatizing law enforcement" is good. To a hammer everything looks like a nail and when you pay that private company "per nail" you can bet that's what they'll find at every corner. But you can always grab the issue from your end and try to do something about it. Otherwise next time you might as well have the Police impound your car and pay them for the ride. Same difference.
1. Step one, file claim in small claims court, get your money back / recorded action against the towing company / etc.
2. Carry a tyre valve removal tool with you. Whenever you see one of the offending companies tow trucks parked, and either unoccupied, or the driver is distracted, remove the valves from as many of the trucks tyres as you can.
This shouldn’t damage the tyres, unless they are left deflated for a long period, and it’s extremely inconvenient.
Also allow the use of force in defense of property wrongfully seized.
Will not end well. The more aggressive towing companies in Atlanta send their operators out in pairs, wearing mirrored sunglasses, body armor and carrying sidearms like they're mercenaries. You're outmanned and outgunned.
It's like they know they're engaged in business that might upset people or something.
The police, with all their training, still shoot civilians accidentally. I really wouldn't want to test the how-not-to-shoot-civilians training of some wannabe-Blackwater towing goon.
The city council has shown interest in restricting towing (has done it) and just recently they had one of them on TV talking about towing bad actors.
There is a lot of cynicism further down the chain but it is just BS by people who don't know anything, as at least in Minneapolis politicians have taken action regarding towing.
Note: sheriffs of London paid 300 £s per year, hoping to make a profit from the fines they collected.
A labourer's annual wages at the time were 2 £/yr.
A master carpenter might earn 20-40 £/yr, depending on days worked.
A kitchen servant, 2 - 4 shillings/yr.
In: "List of price of medieval items"
http://medieval.ucdavis.edu/120D/Money.html
Thanks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publican
If anyone is interested in some of the roman dynamics of the time I highly recommend Paul Maier's historical fiction on Pontius Pilate: https://www.amazon.com/Pontius-Pilate-Paul-L-Maier/dp/082544.... (his book on Nero is great too)
It's not unlike winning friends and donors for campaign funds by playing nice with wealthy special interests as a modern politician in order to progress up the ladder to national office and then continue to win re-election.
Having your car broken down is the least of your problem. They will come, drag your car to their affiliated workshop, charge you high fees, and then the workshop charges you high fees as well. You can refuse, but it involves lots of persistence.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile_Club_d%27Italia
Good riddance.
In a corrupt city if you piss of people with connections you get run out of business unless you also have connections.
Owned a small business that was trying to get work with a city agency.
Got denied to be an approved vendor when I applied. We were told they would reconsider in two years.
A client of mine was wealthy and well connected. He was trying to convince me to let him invest in my business. I told him about being denied.
He made a phone call on our behalf to city hall. We got a call from the city agency within an hour that we were now an approved vendor.
Moral of the story. Chicago is corrupt AF.
You are storing personal property on public property. Move your car according to the law, or pay to park it (in a lot or towing fee, I dun care). Entitled people are ridiculous.
More residential areas don't have this, though. Some homes have driveways and some buildings have garages. There's always a paid garage nearby or airport parking.
The problem was they weren't enforced. As others mentioned in this thread, you can only operate this way as a business with political connections.
Regulations in themselves are never sufficient. They have to be practical and their utility measured based on the reality of the efficacy in real life. A hundred more rules for customers/businesses won't solve the deficiencies of government inefficiencies, corruption, and cronyism.