Should UG take over tow lot operations?

Discussion centers on changes for tow lots

A Unified Government police official on Monday evening proposed changes to towing and tow lot operations here.

The topic has been under discussion for a few years, according to Capt. Dustin Dungan of the Kansas City, Kan., Police Department. He presented his analysis to the UG’s Public Works and Safety Standing Committee.

The Unified Government currently contracts with three tow companies, All Star Tow, for the northeast quadrant of the city; Alandon Tow, for the western part of the city; and All City Tow, for the southeast quadrant of the city.

There is an average of about 5,000 tows a year, combined, for the Kansas City, Kan., Police Department and Wyandotte County Sheriff’s Department, he said.

Capt. Dungan said there are contract requirements that are not being complied with currently. Some of these include: one of the tow lots does not have storage space of 2 acres; one does not have a hard-based surface; none of the tow companies meets the 20-minute response time requirement; towing of more than one vehicle at a time by each wrecker is prohibited, but some are taking two at a time; air conditioning and heating of the lot is required when police search the vehicles; and none of the lots are truly secure.

A complaint from the tow companies was there were not enough tows to be profitable for them, according to Capt. Dungan. Currently, tow trucks from other companies that are hired to tow a vehicle to another location, such as from the tow lot to the house, are being charged $50 to pull onto the lot if there is no proof of worker’s compensation insurance, he said.

Capt. Dungan said some of the tow lots are not secure enough from theft.

Residents trying to pick up a vehicle that has been on a police hold have to go to two locations, first the law enforcement office, then the tow lot, before the vehicle is released, he said. Several victims’ vehicles on police holds were sold at auction before they were released, he said. Also, victims’ property, such as photos in the cars, was not released to the victims, he said.

Several vehicles were discovered to be stolen or had a lienholder from another jurisdiction, he said. Two companies do a search to see if they are stolen, but one company does not, he said. Vehicles that were sold at auction have been found to be stolen, and then the UG legal department has to get involved with it, and the car is sent back to the tow lot until a judge makes a ruling on whose car it is, he said.

There was one incident where a municipal court judge ordered a tow company to reimburse a person, and it took several months to reimburse the person for the tow, he said.

Currently, the employees of tow lots do not undergo driver’s license or background checks, he said. Employees have complete access to the vehicles on the tow lots, he said.

Capt. Dungan said if the UG operated a tow lot, it would increase the security of all towed vehicles, and only police and sheriff’s personnel would have access to vehicles that are on police holds.

He said background checks are already run on police and sheriff employees. He proposed that two employees from the UG could be moved to the location to take care of releasing the vehicles.

The fees could be reduced for victims of a crime under this proposal, he said, and they would only have to go to one site to pick up their vehicles. Victims’ cars would not be sold at auctions, he added. Victims would be allowed to remove items from their cars, and the police tow lot would comply with judges’ orders in a timely manner, he said.

Cars that are sold from the tow lot could be placed in an auction at the same time as police property items are auctioned, he added.

Capt. Dungan’s proposal is to reduce the number of tow companies from three to two. He said they would not have to worry about long-time storage of vehicles held by the district attorney, some as much as seven years or more.

Also, tow companies will be compensated for every tow and every time they are called to the scene by a police officer, he said. They won’t have to provide a secure location for storage of police held vehicles, he said, and they won’t have to provide Internet access to their security cameras to the police department, he added.

Capt. Dungan said of 20 cities in the region, 50 percent of them have police or city-operated tow lots. Kansas City, Mo., has a city-owned tow lot, he said.

Capt. Dungan said 20 minutes is the length of time the tow company has to respond to a call now, as listed in the contract, while the Kansas City, Mo., response time is 6 minutes. Capt. Dungan, in response to a question from Commissioner Jane Philbrook, said he didn’t think 30 minutes was too long, and most of the Kansas City, Kan., responses are about that length of time.

Kansas City, Mo., is paying about $1.7 million a year to pay off its tow lot, he said. After seven years, it will be paid, and that city then will make about $2.2 million a year on the tow lot, Capt. Dungan said.

Capt. Dungan did not have a proposed location for the police tow lot, in answer to a question from Commissioner Mike Kane.

Capt. Dungan said if approved, this change would probably take a couple years to complete. The contract with the current tow companies expires in May 2016, and could be extended, according to Jenny Myers of the UG legal department. This discussion is more about the future than about the short term.

Commissioner Angela Markley pointed out that if the UG decided to have its own tow lot, it would not have its own tow trucks, so contracts would still be necessary with the tow companies.

Capt. Dungan said he talked to several tow companies, and no matter what, victims have to pay about $80 if their car is towed. A mandatory fee applies in both Independence, Mo., and Johnson County, with no waiving of fees for victims, and Capt. Dungan said he did not think it was right.

No representatives from current tow companies spoke at the meeting.

But a representative of Midwest Tow Service of Wyandotte County spoke up to ask to be allowed to be one of the approved tow companies. Currently it isn’t one of the three. He asked that his company be able to bid.

Elnora Jefferson of Kansas City, Kan., remarked that the cars could be sold if the tow company gained title to the car because the owner did not pay the towing fee. If the amount of the purchase price was greater than the cost, then that is a profit for the tow company under Kansas law, she said. Nebraska and Oklahoma handle this differently, she said.

“Would the police department do things differently rather than making a profit off of the owner’s vehicle?” she asked.