HOW D.C. COPS SCHEME TO TAKE YOUR CAR

The D.C. Inspector General's Office has uncovered a scheme in which police
officers and towing companies collaborate to illegally confiscate cars and
charge victims exorbitant storage fees.

The Metropolitan Police Department yesterday began an internal
investigation into the report's findings, Executive Assistant Police Chief
Terrance W. Gainer said.

Chief Gainer said the Office of Professional Responsibility has "for some
time" been investigating some of the problems named in the report, which
was issued in March. Department officials also are using the findings "to
see if there are ways we can improve our business practices," he said.

In the report, titled "A Review of the District of Columbia Towing
Regulations and Its Enforcement," investigators for D.C. Inspector General
Charles C. Maddox cited instances in which officers violate D.C. law and
department rules by arranging for illegal towing, not notifying car owners
and having a financial stake in towing companies.

Illegally towed vehicles disappear in sparsely regulated private impound
lots, leaving owners without cars and insurance companies with large bills,
according to a copy of the report obtained by The Washington Times.

The report does not specify how many officers were involved in the scheme.
Chief Gainer said no one has been disciplined because the investigation has
just started.

Investigators found that some police officers and civilian employees used
their positions of authority to further their private towing companies. For
example, one civilian police employee towed cars to a police building
during his shift, then used his private towing truck to impound the
vehicles after work.

One officer working security at an apartment complex ordered cars towed by
a towing company he was associated with. The officer, who later resigned,
also was seen driving a private tow truck while in uniform.

Some officers and tow truck drivers collaborated to tow legally parked
cars, the report said.

At the request of a tow company owner, one officer responded to a
McDonald's parking lot outside his patrol area to issue infractions, and
three waiting trucks took the cars away while the owners helplessly
watched, investigators reported.

In another variant of the scheme, some officers at accident scenes or who
recover stolen cars directly call tow trucks instead of waiting for
dispatchers to send a contractor's tow truck, investigators found.

As a result, no record of the tow is kept and the company can keep the car
to rack up storage fees.

The report did not mention whether these officers receive kickbacks from
the companies they help.

Police agencies in the area have uncovered similar schemes involving law
enforcement officers, but "it's kind of rare," said Metro Transit Police
Sgt. James Holmes, who is a director of the International Association of
Auto Theft Investigators.

"It's rare that police are involved in some type of internal corruption,
but it has happened in the past in D.C. and in the outlying jurisdictions,"
Sgt. Holmes said.

The report found that while some officers broke D.C. laws and department
rules in their work with towing companies, others just did not properly
enforce towing regulations.

In addition to the towing scheme, the report criticized the Metropolitan
Police Department's system for documenting and tracking recovered stolen
vehicles as "antiquated and not functional."

The department's database holds only 15 of the 17-digit vehicle
identification number.

Even worse, "more than half of the numbers were either entered incorrectly
or not entered at all," the report states.

"As a result of officers failing to notify owners, owners have often gone
months without a vehicle and are faced with a large tow and storage
expense," according to the report.