One of my coffee shop co-workers got arrested at work once, she ended up having to spend three days in the county jail (unpaid traffic tickets leading to a suspended license; getting pulled over on a suspended license that she didn’t know had been suspended leading to being charged with a misdemeanor; failure to appear leading to a bench warrant; and this is how you end up in jail for one traffic ticket the system is abusive and targets the poor). A dipshit small-town cop was cruising around behind businesses and scanning license plates to see if he could get his quota up.
When the cops put her in the back of their car they started to call the tow company at which point my boss was like “????? Why? She’s in my parking lot? The car can stay.”
The cop was like “well, she doesn’t have a right to leave her car here so we’re going to tow it, she’s getting arrested, she has to deal with the consequences”
And thankfully (in this situation) my boss was an asshole and he was like “Look, man, I give free coffee to everyone who matters in town, the city council likes me more than they like you, the police chief knows me better than she knows you, if you bring a tow truck into my lot to take this car when I, the business owner, have not called to have a car towed and she, the car owner, has not called for a tow I’m going to go to walk into your station and file a report for grand theft auto.”
My boss ended up actually taking her keys and driving the car back to her apartment, which is good because the dipshit cop showed up at the end of my shift to hassle me about “loitering” in the back of the coffee shop where I’d just locked up and blocked me in with his cruiser asking where the other car had gone because he was going to have it towed.
We did the math on it and if our boss hadn’t prevented the tow it would have cost over $900 in impound fees for the 3 days she’d spend in jail. At that point minimum wage was $8/hr and we made *a tiny bit* more than that so basically it would have cost this girl over a hundred hours (nearly three weeks worth of work with the way our hours shook out at the coffee shop) to get her car back.
Anyway that same year the cops in that city towed a car to the city yard, opened up the hatchback, and shot a guy who had been sleeping in his car:
Also in 2009, at Approximately 3:30 a.m. Jan 30, a Sierra Madre police officer discovered a Nissan SUV within the city that had been reported stolen. The Nissan was towed back to the rear of the police station on Sierra Madre Blvd. To their surprise officers opened the hatchback of the SUV and found a man in the vehicle’s cargo area where he had allegedly been sleeping under a blanket. Why the officer(s) didn’t see the individual before the car was towed has been the subject of much speculation and supposition. 46-year-old Jason Jensen, had allegedly been living in the car that had been reported as stolen . SMPD’s Amos then shot Jensen with a single round to the upper torso. The internal investigation was completed and placed Amos is back on duty.
(the car wasn’t actually stolen, there was an ownership conflict and it had been reported stolen by a co-owner, not that sleeping in a stolen car justifies getting shot by the goddamned cops)
So, you know, fuck the police.
And look, I’m a reasonable person, I understand that sometimes someone blocks you in and needs to be towed, that’s an actual matter of public safety; I get that when someone is in an accident there has to be a place to put the car until they’re able to claim it.
But if you’re saying it costs more per day to maintain the space and insurance for a car in an impound lot than it costs for me to stay in The fucking Roosevelt then I say you’re a liar and an extortionate thief, you bloodsucking parasites.
Anyway, if you live in California call your representative about Assembly Bill 516, which would make it harder for police to tow cars.
