Nov 12, 2009 11:16 pm US/Central
42 Tickets, 1 Car
Barrage Of Paper Begs Question: Why Wasn't Car Towed Over The Past Several Weeks?
CHICAGO (CBS) ―
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City officials can't explain why this Ford was papered with tickets, rather than being towed, over the past several weeks.
CBS
At least three city departments are trying to figure out who dropped the ball -- repeatedly passing and repeatedly ticketing a car parked in the same spot for months.
No fewer than 42 tickets were issued.
CBS 2 Chief Correspondent Jay Levine reports.
We wanted to see how many tickets they'd give it without sending a tow truck. We saw them on the ground, mixed with leaves on the windshield. From inside you couldn't even see through the driver's side window.
"I thought it was ridiculous," neighbor Mike Wordlaw told us.
And so did the rest of the neighbors around Madison and Leavitt on the West Side, who saw tickets added day after day after day.
Most of them came after Streets and Sanitation scrawled the first tow order on the rear window of the 1993 Ford Taurus more than two months ago. A spokesman said Thursday it recorded the wrong address, and then forgot about it, despite street-cleaning crews passing on a regular basis.
"What'd the street cleaners do?" we asked neighbor Germaine Lewis.
"They went around and put tickets on it."
So apparently did police officers on patrol -- writing more tickets for missing plates, no city sticker, or just being abandoned.
Somebody must have seen us taking these pictures Wednesday night because within hours, the car which had been there for months was gone.
We called the city's auto pound to see if the car was there.
It was. But the surprising part was how much the car with thousands of dollars' worth of tickets on it would have cost to get out: $170. That's the cost of 1 ignored ticket.
The Department of Revenue says it doesn't hold cars for unpaid tickets until it determines the of the owner. Tell that to everyone getting booted.
Searching for the owner, we came up with the name of a West Side resident after tracing the license plate. Marcus Tate swore he doesn't own the car or know anything about all the tickets.
Marcus is a hardworking security officer at a local hospital. It turns out his nephew is the last registered owner.
"I wanna talk with him to see how my name is attached to the car," Tate said.
So does the department of revenue. But after months of police writing up the car, tickets recorded on revenue department computers, they don't seem to be trying very hard.
Tate said he hasn't seen any notices.
It's not as if the city doesn't need the money.
But the real mystery is why the beat cops continued to pass by day after day, papering the car with tickets, rather than having it towed.
Tonight a police spokesman would say only: "We are looking into the number of citations and nature of the violations."
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