New bill would prohibit police from towing cars for expired registration, unpaid citations

Illegal parking is a growing issue in the city of Santa Cruz and police say a new bill could make it worse.

Assembly Bill 516 would prohibit law enforcement or public employees from towing or immobilize a vehicle because it has five or more unpaid parking tickets, expired registration past 6 months, among other citable offenses.

Author of the bill, Assembly Member David Chiu said “if you can’t afford to pay your parking tickets or car registration, or afford private parking, you can’t afford hundreds or thousands of dollars to get your car out of a tow yard. This results in low-income Californians losing their cars, their ability to get to work, their jobs, and even their shelter.”

Santa Cruz Police Chief Andy Mills said he understands what the bill is trying to do, but tying the hands of law enforcement is not the way to go about it. “If AB 516 is approved and signed off by the governor it will prohibit police from towing vehicles for expired registrations and for multiple parking tickets. I understand the intent behind it, but the effect on a coastal community like ours would be enormous.”

Chief Mills adds he does want to see change, but this way could cause more harm than good, “what I would like to see is maybe a positive way to deal with that problem rather than prohibiting police from doing their job.”

People living along Delaware Avenue have been dealing with a rise in illegal parking. They had a range of of opinions when it came to law enforcement no longer being able to tow cars for those reasons.

“You have all these people that live pretty comfortably off of the street, they’ve paid a lot of money and worked really hard for that space, but you also got somebody here living on the street just trying to survive. But like I was saying I don’t want human feces, you know i don’t want to step across crap or something to get to my car,” said resident Gray.

Larry Ernst said he sees the problem getting worse if they take away towing ability, “it’s just going to compile and encourage more and more to park here and cumulatively that’s really going to cause a problem.”

So far Santa Cruz Police have issued more than 981 parking citations.

To read more on the bill click here.