This article was created for Propublica’s local reporting network in collaboration with Connecticut Mirror. Sign up for Dispatch to get stories in your inbox every week.
Gary Hudson was excited to plan a fishing trip with her 4-year-old son and bought a fishing pole for her kids in late 2019. He threw it into the trunk of a Ford Taurus and parked it on the street outside Hartford, Connecticut.
Within hours, his car was carried by tow truck. Hudson couldn’t afford to pay more than $300 in towing and storage fees, and asked if he could at least get in the car to collect his belongings.
He offered to pay $20, but Whitey, Hartford’s towing company, said he had to pay him in full. “They won’t be upset,” Hudson said. “So I can’t get the equipment for work, and do you expect me to make money to pay you?” When Hudson couldn’t afford to retrieve the car, he said, Whitey sold it and he lost his belongings. Whitey was then closed and its owner died.
Connecticut Miller and Propovica have been heard repeatedly from people with similar stories. Inside the car there were work equipment, children’s car seats, or personal memorabilia, and the towing company refused to return them.
The Connecticut Department of Motor Vehicle Regulation says that vehicle owners can recover “personal property essential to the health and welfare of everyone.” But it gave towing companies a wide latitude on how they interpret the rules, and several people whose cars were towed said that the companies would use their belongings as leverage to make them pay towing and storage fees.
Previous reports by CT Mirror and Propublica showed Connecticut laws have come to support towing companies at the expense of vehicle owners. Connecticut has one of the shortest windows in the country, while cars are towed and while towing companies can think they can abandon and begin the sales process. Low-income people are particularly affected by these laws, the news organization found.
Some nearby states, like Rhode Island, have no book laws regarding obtaining property from towing vehicles. However, in doing so, the list of items that must be allowed to be acquired by the owner is often wider than in Connecticut. In Maine, people can collect clothing, car seats, medicines and mail. In New York, people can retrieve anything from their vehicles. The Massachusetts Legislature bill would have the driver do the same.
In an interview last year, Michelle Givens, assistant legal director at Connecticut DMV, said he could not say whether work equipment is recognized as essential for health and welfare.
“It’s broad,” Givens said. “I can’t answer that and sit here and say, ‘Yes, it’s probably entitled.’ ”
So I can’t get work equipment, and do you expect me to make money to pay you?
– Gary Hudson, security guard not permitted to take his belongings out of towing vehicle
DMV Commissioner Tony Guerrera said he thought the car owner should file a complaint with the agent if he was unable to put his belongings out. The complaint process can take several weeks, which is often longer than the period before the towing company was allowed to sell the car.
Timothy Vibert, president of Towing & Recovery Experts at the Connecticut Industrial Association, said people can generally retrieve medicine and tools, but he said that if people wait a few months for them to get them, some of the law should not apply. He added that if people don’t pay the towing fee, the tower will be reluctant to return their belongings.
“If someone borrows you $800 and they call you and say they want to get something from the car,” he asked.
Other towers say they are more tolerant. Sal Sena, owner of Sena Brothers and Cross Country Automotive in Hartford, said that if someone can have the vehicle key or prove it is them, they can get it, whether they pay or not.
“I don’t care if you take things out or not, but I just want to make sure you’re not putting my ass in a situation that bothers my ass,” Senna said. “Did you get the keys? Because you can then take what you want from the car and I can justify it.”
Connecticut legislators are looking to change the state’s towing laws. House Bill 7162, voted by the committee in March, overhauls the law and allows owners to recover “personal property” from towed cars.
The bill “is making strong efforts to identify and correct abusive practices in the towing industry that have had serious and harmful effects on car owners,” legal aid lawyer Raffy Podolski said in public testimony.
Tow Company employees and owners opposed the bill, saying it was difficult to tow illegal or unsafe parking vehicles and that the tower had not had enough involvement in creating the law.
Co-chairs of Christine Cohen, D-Guilford’s Co-Chair of Transportation Committee, said at a meeting in March that the importance of the issue would be towed and come home for her because of the “number of people” who said they were not allowed to retrieve their belongings from the vehicle.
“People should certainly make them aware of their rights regarding towing vehicles,” she said.
Hudson, who was planning a fishing trip, had to save up to replace holsters, maces and safety equipment for security work. He canceled the fishing trip and told his son that he “breaks his promise” had failed.
“It really, really hurts,” Hudson said.
Hudson is one of several people who told news organizations he lost what he needed to work, including tools, chef’s knife and draft film scripts.
Hamden carpenter and mechanic Paul Bodlow said he lost over $1,500 of his entire carpentry tool set when Chevrolet Blazer was towed from his apartment in April 2021.
The vehicle was not registered as it failed to pass the emissions test, and his mechanics were waiting for the difficult part to acquire during the supply chain crisis following the Covid-19 lockdown. The management of the apartment complex gave him time to register it, he said, so he was surprised when he looked out the window and saw the vehicle’s vehicle getting caught.
He said Myhoopty.com, a Watertown towing company, said it would cost over $300 to get it back. As his wife is recovering from cancer, Bodrow finds he can’t afford to retrieve his car as his carpentry is lacking due to the pandemic and “not a cash penny.”
Still, he asked him to get his tools multiple times, and he told the DMV he was denied. However, Myhoopty owner Michael Festa said in an interview:
Connecticut DMV discovered that Myhoopty had not committed any towing-related violations, but did not address the items that Boudreau said were in the vehicle.
“Everyone we spoke to said, ‘There’s nothing we can do,'” Bodrow said in an interview.
Eighteen days later, Myhoopty submitted a form selling the blazer.
The towing of his apartment made Bodrow a tenant union organizer. He said that state legislators always tell him that when it comes to landlords, their “property is sacred.”
Center Paul Bodlow will speak at Connecticut’s Tenants Coalition meeting at the State Capitol last year. Experience in towing his car made him the organizer of a tenant. Credit: Shahrzad Rasekh/CT Mirror
“Why are our property not sacred? Why are our cars not sacred?” Boudreau asked about the tenants. “The wealth of the wealth of the wealth is always sacred, but the wealth of the poor means nothing.”
Other drivers lost possessions that hold sentimental value – photos, sewing projects, prayer cards from father’s funeral.
When Brandon Joyner’s Nissan Maxima was towed out from the front of his Bridgeport home in 2017, he lost a photograph of his mother and aunt, who had never been digitized. He also had shoes, clothes and car seat for Nie and ne in the car, he said.
The car was towed because Joyner owed the car tax. After a few weeks of savings, he paid his taxes. However, when he asked for his car, he said it was said it had been sold.
“It’s all gone,” he said.
Connecticut DMV does not set up the system to implement the towing method a century ago
It took him several months to buy a new vehicle as he was still paying back the old loan from the bank. When he told them he didn’t have a car anymore and didn’t want to pay it, it damaged his credit score and made it difficult to get a loan for a new car, he said.
“It was harmful because there’s nothing you can really do,” Joyner said. “No matter how many people you talk to, you lose things. It’s no matter who it is, no one cares.”
We are investigating Connecticut towing practices that allow businesses to sell people’s cars just 15 days later. If you’ve been influenced, we want to hear from you.
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Asia Fields contributed the report.
