I dont understand, how can they take his car? It's his, he owns it, isn't that theft?
I can see they giving a fine but they shouldn't be able to take the car?
I live in SoCal. Back in August of 1992 my family and I were out of state on a short vacation. I'd left my '83 Hurst Olds in my driveway at home - it was under a car cover and backed in to the driveway so the trunk was closest to our house. None of the tires were flat and it was not an eyesore. I had not yet started a restomod project on it.
When we returned home the driveway was empty.
After calling the city police to report it stolen, I found out it had been towed out of my driveway because the registration wasn't current. That meant someone had to come on to my property and lift the car cover to check the registration tag. I couldn't prove it but I'm certain the culprit was my across-the-cul-de-sac neighbor who didn't like it sitting in my driveway. He had recently been elected to the city Planning Commission and, I'm certain, complained to code enforcement.
When I was able to contact the yard it was in the following morning I found out it was scheduled to be crushed just a couple of days later. I ended up getting it back after paying the storage at the yard and catching up the registration.
My neighbor and I never spoke after that. I'm not sure what might have happened if my Hurst Olds had ended up crushed.
He moved back to Ohio several years later.