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Detroit —After watching the Detroit Tigers’ 2011 Opening Day victory, Brian Harris walked back to the spot on Woodward where he’d parked a few hours earlier. His 2006 Ford F-150 was gone, impounded as an abandoned vehicle.

“I wasn’t in a no-parking zone, and my plates weren’t expired,” said Harris of St. Clair Shores. “Everything was legal. It’s like they’re just picking up cars whenever they want.”

Controversy has swirled around Metro Detroit’s police towing operations for years. In Detroit, where towers have been without formal contracts since 2002, the city’s auditor general has accused tow companies of stealing cars, fleecing customers and maintaining questionable records. Citizens regularly complain their vehicles were improperly impounded.

With the Detroit Board of Police Commissioners set to vote in February on new rules to revamp the process, there’s been a flurry of lawsuits, company restructuring and complaints about corruption.

“It’s like the Wild West,” said Phyllis Hernandez, owner of Casino Towing, one of the companies vying for the city’s towing business. “There are so many shady things going on, right out in the open, and it just keeps happening.”…………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Towing controversies aren’t confined to Detroit. In Ann Arbor, for instance, there have been complaints for years about tow companies charging exorbitant fees after impounding cars outside Michigan Stadium on game days. Brownstown-based Martin’s Towing has been the subject of lawsuits alleging the company unfairly gets an inordinate number of towing contracts with Downriver police departments.

“There are millions of dollars at stake,” Hernandez said. “So there’s a lot of room for corruption.”

In Detroit, 23 companies are authorized to impound vehicles that are improperly parked, abandoned or involved in crimes. In return, they keep their towing and storage revenues. It’s unclear how much money they make; Auditor General Joe Harris found sloppy record-keeping in a series of audits from 2001-05. Harris said between 30,000 and 40,000 vehicles are towed in Detroit each year.

“The only revenues the City of Detroit earns from its towing programs are generated from the auction of abandoned vehicles,” Harris wrote in his 2005 audit. Detroit recoups about $300,000 annually in auctioned auto sales.

Harris also said in his audits that the Police Department was improperly funneling business to Gasper Fiore, owner of Boulevard and Trumbull Towing, the city’s largest tow firm. Fiore and his wife, Joan, controlled six firms on the police towing rotation, although he recently filed a lawsuit claiming he sold three of them. The suit, which is pending, came after the Detroit Board of Police Commissioners began working on new rules prohibiting family ownership of more than one company on the tow rotation.

Stalled rules changes

Harris’ audits suggested that Detroit retool its towing operation, but when the police board began working on rules to restructure the process in 2009, accusations of intimidation, stalking and corruption began to fly.

Commissioner Michael Reeves filed a police report in September 2010 claiming he was threatened to refrain from voting on the proposed rules. Commissioner Jerome Warfield said during the May 5, 2011, board meeting that he had been followed. As the board prepared to vote on the proposed towing rules, the city’s law department requested more time to review the issue. A year and a half later, the rules remain in limbo, and the board has been bogged down with the issue.

“Towing isn’t something I ever thought I’d spend a lot of time thinking about,” said Board Chairman Donnell White. “We’ve worked hard to put an equitable system in place, and after we vote on the new rules, I hope we can concentrate on other important issues.”

Boulevard and Trumbull is the focus of much of the controversy. Among those who have complained about the company improperly impounding vehicles is Brian Harris, who insisted his truck wasn’t parked illegally when he parked on Woodward near Winder in April. Although a receipt from Boulevard and Trumbull and paperwork from 36th District Court say Harris’ truck was impounded because it was abandoned, a few days after The News contacted Boulevard and Trumbull seeking information about the case, the city sent Harris a letter informing him that he owed $50 because his truck had been parked in a no-standing zone. None of the documents given to Harris seven months earlier indicated he’d been illegally parked, and Harris said no ticket was ever issued.

Fatima Maddox of the city’s Municipal Parking Department said it’s possible Harris’ car was ticketed for a parking violation, and also was ordered to be towed as an abandoned vehicle.

$315 towing fee charged

Ed Gillis of Flat Rock said Boulevard and Trumbull charged a “ridiculous” fee of $315 to tow his daughter’s car less than 2 miles and store it overnight after she hit a street sign Nov. 22. Gillis rushed to the scene after his daughter, Amelia, called him. He found her 1995 Geo Prizm impaled on the gnarled signpost. “A tow truck showed up, got the car off the pole, and drove it onto the service drive,” Gillis said. “Then he started hooking it up. I told him I didn’t want him towing the car … but he told me he had to tow it.”

Gillis said he was unaware of a state law requiring towers to return vehicles to their owners if requested, unless they’re impeding traffic or are believed to have been stolen. “I wish I’d have known about that law; I’d have been more assertive about it,” he said. “The car wasn’t impeding traffic at all; it was up on a curb.”

Boulevard and Trumbull attorney Marc Deldin insisted drivers never tow vehicles unless directed by a police officer, and said Gillis’ fee involved more than a tow. “We had to send out two trucks and use a winch to get the car off the pole,” he said.

Gillis’ receipt didn’t mention the use of a winch; only a “light-duty towing,” for which his insurance company reimbursed him just $75. When another company towed the car from Boulevard and Trumbull’s lot to a garage at Allen Road and Sibley in Brownstown, 15 miles away, the fee was less than half of what Boulevard and Trumbull charged.

“They stole my daughter’s car,” said Gillis’ wife, Angie, who said Boulevard and Trumbull would only accept cash when she went to pick up the car the day after the incident.

Fiore said he realizes he’s often at the center of controversy.

“It seems like it’s targeted at me all the time,” he said. “But I got nothing to hide.”

ghunter@detnews.com

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