Sergeants Towing

[February 4th, 2004] OK, she admits it--she should have been on the lookout for the signs, which would have told her that if she parked in the restaurant's lot, her car could be towed.

But Portland teacher Carrie Clark says she had other things on her mind--namely, the mammoth snow and ice storm that kept Portland in a transportation deep-freeze throughout early January.

As she searched the darkened inner East Side for a parking spot the night of Friday, Jan. 9, Clark found side streets unplowed and main thoroughfares barricaded by piled-high snow. Clark, who was chauffeuring some out-of-town friends, couldn't get to the Red Lion Hotel where they were staying. So she sought refuge in the nearby Denny's parking lot off Northeast Hassalo Street.

Clark noticed a man sitting in the car next to hers as she parked, but it was only when she returned an hour later to find her car missing that he spoke up. He identified himself as an employee of Sergeants Towing. Her car, the man said, was safe and sound at the impound lot, per the contract between the tow company and Denny's. And she'd only need to shell out $224.50 to free her ride.

"He was strictly by the book," Clark says of the towing hawk. "He was just doing his job."

Clark, who retrieved her car that night, nonetheless filed a complaint about the incident with city towing overseer Marian Gaylord. Gaylord says there's not much she can do for the teacher. Denny's has a right to tow cars from its private property, no matter how frightful the weather or befouled the streets.

As for policies that allow tow-company spotters to watch people walk away from their cars without warning them of their danger, Gaylord says there's nothing her office can do about that, either. "This has been one of the sore points in the towing issue," she says.

Last September, Gaylord's boss, City Commissioner Randy Leonard, piloted an ordinance that will cap what towing companies can charge for tows from private lots. Clark's predicament may explain why the local towing industry found little sympathy when it lobbied against Leonard's law.