Connecticut Towers Use Belongings Found in Cars to Collect Fees, Drivers Say — ProPublica

Gary Hudson enthusiastically planned a fishing trip with his 4 -year -old son and bought a fishing post for children at the end of 2019. He threw him in the trunk of his Ford Taurus and parked on the street outside his home in Hartford, Connecticut.

In a matter of hours, his car was dragged by a crane. Hudson could not pay the more than $ 300 in towing and storage rates and asked him if at least he could enter the car to collect his belongings: the fishing post and the safety vest and the wives he needed to work nightly.

He said he said that he would pay $ 20, but that Whity’s, a Heartford towing company, told him that he had to pay the total amount. “They wouldn’t move, point,” said Hudson. “So I can’t get my work team and expect money to pay you?” When Hudson could not afford the luxury of recovering the car, he said, Whitey sold it and lost his belongings. Whitey’s has closed since then, and its owner has died.

Connecticut Mirror and Propublic have repeatedly listened to people with similar stories. Within their vehicles, they had work teams, child car seats or personal memories, and tow companies refused to return them.

The regulations of the Connecticut motor vehicle department say that vehicle owners can recover “personal goods that is essential for the health or well -being of any person.” But that gives towing companies a wide freedom in how they interpret the rule, and several people whose cars were to say that companies used their belongings as leverage to pay towing and storage rates.

It conforms to the reports of CT Mirror and Propublic showed how Connecticut laws have favored tow companies at the expense of vehicle owners. Connecticut has one of the most short windows in the country among when a car is towed and when the towing companies can candidate abandoned it and start the process of selling it: the colleagues have to wait only 15 days for vehicles worth less than $ 1,500. People with low income have been particularly affected by these laws, news organizations found.

Some nearby states, such as Rhode Island, have no law in books on how to obtain the possessions of Tedwed cars. But in those who do, the list of articles of the owners must be able to recover is broader than Connecticuts. Maine allows people to recover clothing, car seats, measurements and mail. In New York, people can recover anything from the vehicle. A bill in the Massachusetts legislature would allow their drivers to do the same.

In an interview last year, Michelle Givens, Legal Director of the Connecticut DMV, said he could not say if the work team described as essential for health or well -being.

“It’s wide,” Givens said. “I can’t answer that and sit here and say:” Yes, that will qualify. “

Commissioner Tony Guerrera said he thought that car owners should file a complaint with the agency if they can get their beliefs. However, the complaint process can take the week, which is longer than the period before a towing company can sell a car.

Timothy Vibert, president of the Industry Association, Towing & Recovery professionals of Connecticut, said people can generally recover medications or tools, but said that part of the law should not be applied if people wait months to get a subject. Hello, he added that when people do not pay towing rates, it makes the towers reluctant to return their belongings.

“If someone granted you $ 800 and they called and said they took something out of their car,” Hey asked, “Is it okay to Valse here and take their things and then leave you with an invoice of $ 800?”

Other towers say they are more indulgent. Sal Sena, owner of Sena Brothers and Cross Country Automotive in Hartford, said IFY has vehicle keys or can demonstrate that it is yours, which allows them to get things regardless of whether they pay the rates.

“I don’t care if you get things, but I just want to make sure you’re not putting your butt in a situation where I will get into trouble,” Sena said. “Do you have the key? Then take whatever you want from the car because I can justify it.”

Connecticut legislators are looking to change state towing laws. The 7162 bill of the House of Representatives, which was expelled from the committee in March, would review the law and allow owners to recover “any personal property” of a towed motorized vehicle.

The bill “makes a great effort to identify and correct abuusive practices in the trailer industry that have had a serious and harmful effect on motor vehicle owners,” said legal assistance lawyer Rafie Podolsky in public testimonies.

The employees and owners of the towing company have opposed the invoice, saying that it would make it difficult to tow vehicles that are illegally parked or without cannons and that the towers did not have enough inventions to prepare the legisation.

The co-president of the Transport Committee, Senator Christine Cohen, D-Guilford, said a March meeting that the importance of the problem affected her home because “the number of people” who have it were towed and were not allowed withdrawal of their vehicles.

“People should certainly be aware of their rights with respect to Towe Vehyts,” he said.

Hudson, who had planned the fishing trip, had to save to replace his case, Maza and security equipment for security work, which estimated that it cost him around $ 1,000. He canceled the fishing trip and said he failed his son “to break a promise.”

“It really hurt,” said Hudson.

Hudson is one of several people who told the news organizations that they lost to the work: tools, chef knives, including the draft of a movie script.

Paul Boudreau, carpenter and mechanical in Hamden, said he lost all his set of carpentry tools worth more than $ 1,500 when his Blazer Chevrolet was coughing of his apartment complex in April 2021.

The vehicle was registered, it could be an emission test, and its mechanic was waiting for a part that was difficult to obtain the supply chain crisis after the COVID-19 block. The apartment complex management gave him more time to register, he said, so he was surprised when he looked out his window and saw a crane connecting his vehicle.

He said that Myhopty.com, a trailer company in Watertown, told him that it would cost more than $ 300 to recover it. With his wife recovering from cancer, his scarce carpentry work due to pandemic and “not a penny in cash,” Boudreau realized that he could not afford to recover his car.

Even so, he asked him several times to recover his tools and refused, he said in a complaint, that he included a detailed list of tools. But Myhapty owner, Michael Festa, said in an interview: “At no time no one contacted us or tried to lower and recover any personal belonging that may have bone in the vehicle.”

The Connecticut discovered that Myhapty did not commit violations related to the trailer, but did not address the items that Boudreau said they were in the vehicle.

“Anyone we are talking about was like,” there is nothing we can do, “Boudreau said in an interview.

After 18 days, Myhopty presented a form to sell the Blazer.

The TOWS in their apartment complex led Boudreau to become an organizer of the tenant Union. He said that state legislators always tell him that when it comes to owners, his “property is sacred.”

“Why is our property not sacred? Why is our car sacred?” Boudreau asked about tenants. “The property of rich people is always sacred, but the property of poor people means anything.”

Other drivers lost belongings that had sentimental value: photographs, a sewing project, a prayer card of his father’s funeral.

When Nissan Maxima de Brandon Joyner was Towet since the front of his home in Bridport in 2017, he lost photos of his mother and aunt who had never digitized, with which he had traveled since he received his license when he was a teenager. He also had shoes, clothing and a car seat for his nieces and nephews in the vehicle, he said.

The car was Tedwed because Joyner Oed Motor Vehicle Graves in it. After a couple or a week of savings, he paid the taxes. But when he asked for his car, he said it was tolerated that he had sold his leg.

“Everything was gone,” he said.

He took months to pay a new vehicle, partly because he was still paying the previous loan of the bank. When he told them that he no longer had the vehicle and did it because to pay it, he damaged his credit score, which makes it difficult to obtain a loan for a new car, he said.

“It was painful, because there is nothing you can really do,” said Joyner. “It doesn’t matter how many people you talk, you lose things, and it’s not to blame anyone, anyone cares.”