Not to get all grammar-y and off topic, but couldn't of? Has it come to this WJLA?

The DPW towtruck drivers must have been totally high when they did this. They're like, "Dude, no wheels, man" and the other guy's like, "Dude, there'll be so many sparks dude. We gotta do this!" So they do a couple more bong hits and put on "Come Sail Away" and torque up the crane and drag the car and the cinder blocks down the street to the impound lot with their heads out the window yelling, "WOOOOOOO! WOOOOOOOO!" And when they get to the impound lot they bang on the trailer door and they're like, "Dave! Open up!" and the guy behind the door's like, "Dave's not here, man."

Having seen this occur in front of my old place (U Street/10th area), it is MUCH more dangerous to drag the car off in this manner than to do some research. If you are imagining that they dragged it up onto a bed of a truck with no wheels, you'd be wrong. In our case, they dragged it off on its frame, down the street, with the car just weaving erratically behind the truck nearly swiping the others cars (my own included) and leaving a heavy hail of sparks and the scent of burning metal, and a trail of broken parts to wash off into the CSOs.

Ain't no way this was the best answer, even assuming it's not ideal to have a car up on blocks in the street. At the least, running the tags would have been a good idea, then tell the owners to deal with it, pronto. The cost is on the owners (and their insurance, presumably) instead of on DC taxpayers. Now we all get to pay our fair share of their $20K loss.

What exactly should the owners do?? They had the police report, they were waiting for the parts to come in. You think the correct response was to drag the car onto a tow truck WITHOUT wheels??

2 HUGE grammar mistakes...."couldn't of" and "haven't been able to get in touch with anyone other then a...." Seriously, what kind of writer gets a job with that kind of grammar?

whether it should have been towed or not, it's pretty obvious that if it should have been towed, it should have been towed. Not dragged along the street. Even if somebodies property is occupying a place illegally, the government does not have the right to vandalize it.

It should not have been towed; it should have been put on a wrecker. I don't feel bad about DPW taking the car, since it clearly looked like a wreck. However, their manner of hoisting it on cinderblocks and dragging it down the street is simply mind-bogglingly stupid. They - or rather DC taxpayers - just bought that couple a new car. Total, absolute stupidity by the DPW tow truck operator.

They should have just eaten a Mentos and persuaded four beefy European guys to pick up the car and move it to a safe place.

maybe the real lesson here is, if you own a $70k car, buy some $15 wheel locks for it.

This is completely asinine, but typical of D.C. services. Are D.C. government employees retarded, or incompetent, or both? I don't care how much the car cost - I would be fuming if they did this with my $4k, 10-year old VW. How about running the f*king plates before you literally drag the car away?

The owners were waiting for a new set of wheels, not any kind of mechanical repair. It takes less than 10 minutes to bolt a set of wheels onto a car, and you know the thieves managed to remove the old set in less than that.

You can get a set of 4 steel wheels with tires for $200, but thanks to the intervention of D.C. government the owners are looking at the bill for 100x that amount.

They should sue. And they'll win. I should call up the owners and offer to represent them for free.

On a side note, who parks ANY car in D.C. without decent wheel locks? I suggest Gorilla wheel locks. A $30 set is all you need to keep your wheels and tires where they should be.

Isn't this the same city that paved around a parked car on Pennsylvania Ave SE because they couldn't figure out a way to get it towed away during the week that the repaving was being done?

This is definitely one of those "only in DC" stories. Because only in DC would this kind of blatant, forehead-slapping stupidity actually happen. And maybe in Police Academy movies.

Since when does the victim have to be sympathetic? If it was a delipadated old hoopdie (which is was in the case I saw), wouldn't we be saying, aw well, at least the car was worth nothing?

That misses the point. The point is that this is an asinine thing to even consider doing, regardless of if the car is right, wrong, red, blue, cheap, expensive, yada yada.

It's accepting the District's aspirations fo mediocrity to blame them for having a nice car or for not moving it themselves. We don't owe DPW any excuses... you just don't tow a car with no wheels. Why do any of us even have to point that out?

"I guess I am incapable of feeling sympathy towards anyone who thinks it is necessary own a $70k car while living in DC."

Chances are that wealthy couple is paying for a shit-ton of city services that you are using, so I'm not so sure I'd be so pissy about it.

kken:

I don't know if it's hysterics, but I'll take credit for the visual image... because, yeah, I have seen it. Only for about 2 blocks, before they turned left on U Street, but they really did just drag a car off. Maybe they had another truck around the block to put it on? I don't know, but I have seen, with mine own eyes, a clunker hauled down the street screaming sparks and metal (back in 2005, so a while ago). Also, the one I saw had been parked for over a month had all it's windows lost, and was a temporary housing for our local homeless guy. Maybe this car should be considered lucky?

kken: zero sympathy from me on this one and they have zero grounds for a case.

I can think of at least two grounds right off the top of my head: Bailment theory and negligence.

Besides, the theft of the wheels and the towing involve different parties and are legally unrelated.

And I hate all of this talk about how they should not have had such an expensive car in D.C. Personally I see no point in owning a nice car unless you live in Germany and can drive on the Autobahnen, but is our city really so bad that it's considered unwise to own nice things here?

The act of stealing the wheels off a $100k car is no different from stealing the wheels off a $1k car: both are morally reprehensible. ell, I guess technically one is grand larceny and the other just larceny, but still...

"Chances are that wealthy couple is paying for a shit-ton of city services that you are using, so I'm not so sure I'd be so pissy about it."

I reserve my right to be pissy because chances are they're not subsidizing me in any way.

Who on earth would you leave their 70K car on blocks on a public street for 5 days? The owners should have had insurance take the car to a secure lot rather than leaving it on public streets. Sux that their car was vandalized, but why should the general public be put at risk?

deery said it right.

Some day I'm going to buy a real nice German car, and a German villa to park it in.

I'm secure enough in my manhood that i don't need a car that can go 155mph in a country where the maximum speed limit is 75mph.

/has driven an Audi on the autobahns
//and Mercedes-Benz, but honestly the Audi drove better.

hey sticks when people pronounce something couldn't of or shouldn't of, they're not being ignorant. they're actually saying couldn't've thus couldn't have whoever wrote & proofed that piece needs a new job (or incidentally, is just perfectly suited for wtop and a story of that caliber).

Thanks you to Comments 7 and 35 for brightening my day - I fully agree with both.

Its interesting to see how many people think that because someone is "rich" that it is OK that something bad happens to them. Perhaps it was Robin Hood and not the DPW who took the car away?

HCE - Not everybody has offstreet parking, no matter how nice a car they have.

Or maybe since it was Thanksgiving morning they were letting guests use their offstreet parking.

Or maybe their garage was turned into their sex dungeon years ago.

Who knows.

The point is we should be able to park any damn car we want on the street.

"The owner must pay the fee for parking illegally, but the tow truck driver, being negligent, is liable for the cost of damages to the car."

I'd argue that the owners left (abandoned) the vehicle in a condition that made it to hazardous to leave on the street, and unreasonably difficult to tow.

But that's for the courts, I guess. Hey- maybe there'll be a line-item in the next budget for a crane! Their (and Hillamn's!) tax dollars at work!

"I'd argue that the owners left (abandoned) the vehicle in a condition that made it to hazardous to leave on the street, and unreasonably difficult to tow."

Simply not true. Any tow truck operator worth a damn knows how to use a tow dolly.

There was nothing unreasonably or even remotely difficult about it.

The moral of the story is: Get to know your friggin' neighbors so they don't pull this kinda crap on you when your car is on blocks. I'm not saying the neighbor is a bad guy for reporting the car. I'm just saying it probably wouldn't have happened if he and the car owners had met once or twice before.

Modern cinderblocks are actually not strong enough to hold up a car for very long. The old-style blocks, which were cast from solid concrete could do the job, but the new ones, which are more processed and not very solid won't.

If I owned a $70,000 car, and the wheels were stolen, I would either a) go to Autozone and buy four jackstands to hold it up, or b), knowing that all of this would eventually be covered by my insurance, hire a commercial vehicle towing company to come and lift my car onto a flatbed.

Come to think of it, I would do this for my car, which is probably worth about $69,000 less then the car in this story.

"Get to know your friggin' neighbors so they don't pull this kinda crap on you when your car is on blocks."

I found that a little odd. Usually everyone knows when a neighbor drives a $70,000 car.

I found that a little odd. Usually everyone knows when a neighbor drives a $70,000 car.

Good point. I don't really know one of my neighbors, but I do know he owns two pricey cars, one of which easily costs $85,000+.

You don't change anything in a quote block - otherwise its not a quote.

So then your position is that the car owner WROTE those sentences and sent them to the station, which only copied them over, word for word? Oh yeah, that's plausible . . .

@sticks: "Um... to the people bashing the grammar of "couldn't of"... its a quote, people! They, as a news agency, have to quote people directly, bad grammar and all."

"Couldn't've" and "couldn't of" sound largely the same. When in doubt, you would use the correct spelling so as not to inaccurately assign ignorance to the interviewee.

Is it the law that you can't leave an inoperable car parked on a public street?

Maybe when they talked to the police officer and said "do we have to get it towed right away" the officer said no, meaning, it could stay there for a day or so while they arranged a tow or got the wheels put on quickly. Not "no, it can stay on the street forever up on blocks."

What time limit would you suggest is appropriate to leave a broken down car on the street? A week? A month? A year?

How competitive is parking on that block?

Maybe the neighbors aren't jealous, they're reacting to a "make an exception for me I have a nice car" entitlement attitude.

All that factors in to whether the neighbors are going to call and ask for the car to be towed, if that is even what happened. A car up on blocks is an obvious easy call for a ticket or tow for parking enforcement.

1. Comments about the value of the car being relevant are asinine and blame the victim.

2. I suspect that city law makes it illegal to have an inoperable vehicle on the street. Why it became inoperable, by crime or not, is irrelevant. The owners of the car were idiotic to think that a police report somehow exempted them from being responsible for their vehicle.

3. I'd expect a lawsuit over how the car was inappropriately towed. I'm with the earlier poster re: bailment and negligence.