This story was published as part of Next City’s Detroit News Hub, a reporting project funded by the Kresge Foundation. The hub includes BridgeDetroit, Planet Detroit and Chalkbeat Detroit.
Nagrata Lawson didn’t anticipate the Ford Escape parked in front of his home in Detroit’s Fitzgerald neighborhood would be towed over an expired license plate.
But two days after the city placed an orange sticker on the SUV, which belonged to Lawson’s late mother, his daughter was in her slippers in the middle of the street, trying to convince a police officer not to tow it while her dad was at work.
Lawson said communication from the city ahead of and after the mid-July incident was less than sufficient and he’s still awaiting formal notification about where the car is and how much it’ll cost to retrieve.
“That’s one of my real issues when it comes to stuff like this, dealing with the city, they find the most opportunistic time to not have the person or the homeowner home to deal with situations right then and there,” Lawson told BridgeDetroit.
The family’s vehicle is among nearly 8,000 targeted so far in the city’s crackdown on abandoned vehicles, a blight removal initiative touted as part of Mayor Mike Duggan’s annual State of the City speech. The effort has left some Detroiters and city officials confused and concerned whether residents are being properly informed about the enforcement.
Duggan in April announced plans to rid neighborhoods of abandoned cars, boats, semi-trucks, and trailers by the end of 2024. The mayor said the police department gained 12 enforcement officers to target lots with two or more illegally parked vehicles as well as commercially-owned vehicles stored in residential neighborhoods.
“Our approach involves covering the entire city rather than focusing on specific neighborhoods,” the Detroit Police Department said in a statement about the initiative. “Our primary goal is to ensure every part of the city is brought into compliance with established laws and ordinances.”
DPD told BridgeDetroit that 7,774 abandoned vehicles have been towed this year as of July 31. Additionally, as of Aug. 13, the Police Towing and Impound Unit (PTIU) this year impounded at least 31 boats, 78 campers and 71 trailers.
Boats and trailers can’t be parked on a public street or lawns, according to DPD. Similar to the process for vehicles, the police department places a notice sticker on illegally parked boats and trailers to inform owners of the deadline to move them to avoid being towed.
Abandoned vehicles complicate street cleaning and snow removal, and they create fire hazards, according to the city’s website, and “project a negative image of our city.”
For lifelong Detroiter Lisa Greene, the mayor’s crackdown is a necessary step to clean up the neighborhoods. Greene stressed she’s never left Detroit and, over the years, has noticed vast differences in once blighted communities that have since been cleaned up.
“I’m just all about cleaning up Detroit, whether it’s neighborhoods, the streets, the abandoned buildings,” Greene said, “whether they’re residential or commercial, I just want us to look better in my eyesight. Not for the eyesight of the world, but in my eyesight.
“I just want a better looking Detroit outside of downtown and Midtown,” she said.
According to the city’s website, vehicles are considered abandoned on public property when parked on a public street, highway, alley, or public space for longer than 48 hours and “from its condition and the surrounding circumstances” that they “reasonably appear to be unclaimed, discarded, deserted or abandoned.” Vehicles are deemed abandoned on private property when left for 48 hours or longer without the property owner’s consent.
Greene, who lives in the Seven Mile and Ryan area, said she believes that 48-hour notice “is appropriate enough” for someone to move their vehicle into the driveway after it’s sat on the street for weeks, or even months. Green said she has used the city’s Improve Detroit app to report blight and other issues in her neighborhood.
“I understand people’s vehicles break down and it’s a costly expense to get repaired and things like that,” Greene said, “but after a certain amount of time – maybe 6 months or so or less – I think it needs to move.”
An outline of the city’s procedures for releasing impounded vehicles says vehicles that are towed for blight violations won’t be released to the owner until outstanding tickets are paid. Vehicle owners who choose to deny responsibility must pay a $1,500 bond and show proof of ownership before regaining possession.
Also being targeted under the ramp up is home-based auto repair, which is prohibited under residential zoning ordinances.
City Code prohibits the storage of inoperable and unlicensed vehicles in yards. Property owners can work on one vehicle at a time as long as the work is done in an area designed for that purpose, such as a garage, according to the Department of Appeals and Hearings’ property maintenance guide.
The Buildings, Safety, Engineering, and Environmental Department has shut down four home-based auto-repair shops and 54 unlicensed auto-repair facilities so far this year.
Cities across the U.S. are ramping up enforcement for abandoned vehicles
Although Detroit receives far fewer abandoned vehicle complaints than some other major U.S. cities battling the problem, the city is towing just as many.
Oakland,California has similar issues, with an estimated 25,000 abandoned car complaints received last year and 7,000 vehicles abandoned on city streets, according to media reports. Oakland uses the 311 system SeeClickFix, the website that Detroit also uses for reporting complaints.
However, Oakland took a different approach to enforcing parking regulations and transferred those operations to its Department of Transportation to free up police resources. In Detroit, abandoned vehicle towing was transferred from the Municipal Parking Department to the police department, according to budget memos submitted to the city council earlier this year. Today, the parking department only handles the scofflaw program which targets vehicles with six or more unpaid parking tickets.
Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker’s Clean and Green Initiative calls for tackling abandoned cars on Philly’s streets after the city received just under 40,000 complaints, according to Axios. An explainer posted on the city of Philadelphia’s website lays out how to identify an abandoned vehicle, what can be reported to the police department, what to expect after reporting a vehicle and so forth.
The Detroit Police Department told BridgeDetroit there have been 4,969 abandoned vehicle complaints submitted this year through the SeeClickFix website, where most are received. Complaints also come from neighborhood police officers, various city departments and community members and partners.
Detroit Police Commissioner Ricardo Moore said residents he’s interacted with say the city should have “proactively” educated residents on what was going to happen and that the process is flawed because of the lack of warning that vehicles were going to be tagged and towed.
Moore also expressed concerns about some of Detroit’s neighborhood police officers being reassigned for the abandoned vehicle towing detail. It’s “leaving normal resident concerns prolonged and police officers fatigued,” he said.
Lawson is just one of the residents in the Fitzgerald community who had a vehicle towed off the street in mid-July.
Alex Schultz-Spradlin, a neighbor of Lawson, shared video recordings with BridgeDetroit from his home surveillance system, which depicts Lawson’s vehicle and another being towed from the street within five minutes on July 19. Neither of the vehicles has visible damage based on the video.
Spradlin and Lawson’s daughter are depicted speaking with a police officer who, according to Spradlin, told them that the vehicle owner had to be present to prevent it from being towed.
In Lawson’s case, the vehicle’s owner – Lawson’s mother – died a few years ago, leaving the vehicle tied up in probate. Lawson said the estate process has his hands tied as it relates to obtaining proper plates.
“I can’t do anything with the vehicle until the vehicle is in my name,” he told BridgeDetroit.
Lawson said the police department should’ve known the vehicle was in an estate when they looked it up.
“We live in the world of technology and when they pulled the VIN number up, it should have stated a lot more detail about what’s going on with the vehicle,” he said.
DPD, in a statement, noted that in cases of vehicles being registered to a person who is deceased, “a family member or representative of the state could retrieve the vehicle if in possession of proper documentation.”
For the executor of the will or estate, a probate court order would be accepted. Surviving spouses can visit a Secretary of State’s office to have the title transferred to their name and, at that point, the new title can be used to recover the vehicle.
Lawson said the police department tagged the vehicle two days before it was towed, which is consistent with the city’s ordinance for abandoned vehicles. Although Lawson was working when the vehicle was tagged and when it was towed, he called a number listed on the sticker and found the automated answering system wasn’t helpful.
“I understand everybody works different hours,” Lawson said, “but communication through the city with people who live in the city would work out better versus them coming out, putting something on the vehicle that says we’re gonna do this on this day. It should’ve been ‘Can somebody be home so we can talk about this so we don’t have to go through this process?’”
Spradlin said he wouldn’t have considered the vehicle blighted or abandoned because multiple people live in the home and they have multiple vehicles. The vehicle hadn’t sat for very long before it was tagged, he said.
Another neighbor’s vehicle, he said, was broken down before it was towed and, in that case, he understands why. But Spradlin said he does not understand why Lawson’s was towed.
Darryl Woods, who chairs the Detroit Board of Police Commissioners, said he has not heard any complaints about the city not abiding by its process for towing abandoned vehicles, but said he’ll reach out to the police department to ensure each precinct is educating their communities about the process and the police board will look into adding information to its website.
“In general, we want to make sure everything is done in a constitutional manner and that citizens are being alerted before their vehicles are being towed if they are on public property,” Woods said.
“The department is not just like the repo man,” said Woods, noting that the process involves due process.
Aside from the orange sticker placed on vehicles, residents are provided an opportunity to challenge the abandoned declaration through a hearing under the city’s Department of Appeals and Hearings (DAH).
Blight violation hearings are scheduled with DAH when a ticket is issued and notices are sent in the mail informing residents about the date and time they’ll need to appear. Residents can call the phone number on the notice to learn more about the ticket and the process they’ll need to follow to become compliant, or visit the DAH’s docket search tool where they’ll find information about hearings and outstanding tickets they may have.
The police department notifies the state within 24 hours of an abandoned vehicle being towed to an impound lot. The state then sends a notice to the registered owner notifying them of the law enforcement agency that towed it, the vehicle’s location, and the timeframe in which the vehicle must be claimed.
Residents who find their vehicle has been towed can look up the license plate number or vehicle identification number (VIN) on FindMyTowedCar.org. The website provides information about the date and time it was towed, the towing company, where it’s being stored, and the reason why it was towed. Residents can also call Detroit Police Towing at (313) 596-2617 or any police precinct for more information about towed vehicles.
Vehicles that aren’t claimed within 20 days of the date provided on the notice from the state are sent to the city’s auction. BridgeDetroit’s analysis of the city’s vehicle auction lists found that 7,110 have been sent to auction since Jan. 1, and according to the police department, more than 2,800 were sold at an auction.
Of the 797 vehicles listed in a police auction in August, BridgeDetroit found that 35% were impounded for parking-related violations including abandoned vehicles, private property impounds, and vehicles booted after accruing multiple unpaid parking violations, 23% were involved in an accident, and 14.1% were recovered stolen vehicles.
Woods said he’ll work with the police board’s chief investigator to determine whether any citizen complaints have been raised about the crackdown, but he’s supportive of the city’s effort.
“These vehicles aren’t going to be allowed to be a public nuisance in the suburbs,” he said. “So it’s not acceptable for it to be in the city of Detroit.”