Two of our officers had to go to court for the same court case, but one was on duty and the other came in from off-duty. When the off-duty officer came in and changed into uniform, she learned that the on-duty officer was already on the way to the court house, so she checked out a marked police car and drove to the court house. There is notoriously very little good parking near this particular court house, so the off-duty officer parked in a parking lot across the street from the court house, as she saw several open parking spaces. When she exited her vehicle, the lot attendant tried to explain to her that this was a private parking lot and that the parking spaces were leased to specific individuals. She dismissed him because she was a police officer in a marked police car and she could park anywhere she needed to. Right?
When the two officers finished with court and came out of the court house, the on-duty officer went to his car which was parked on the street and the off-duty officer went…to a parking space that now held an expensive Mercedes. No sign of her marked police car. She began shouting at the lot attendant, demanding to know what happened to her patrol car. The on-duty officer, seeing this, and realizing that she was parked in a private parking lot with all kinds of signs that said vehicles parked in violation would be towed, slowly walked over to her and offered her a ride back to the station so that she could get this all figured out, but she told him that she was going to wait for the lot attendant to produce her patrol car. The on-duty officer slunk off in embarrassment and immediately returned to the station to let the Captain know what was going on.
Apparently, the lessee had come to park his car in his space and found a police car parked there and demanded that the lot attendant have the police car towed away. The lot attendant did what he was supposed to and the officer’s car was in a local tow yard, awaiting payment of towing and release fees. Another on-duty officer picked up the off-duty officer and they went to the tow yard and recovered the police car. The police department was billed and I assume, the bill was paid will all due alacrity from the state, which meant in about eighteen months. And even though the Captain was irate that a tow company that was actually on our list of rotation tow companies would still bill us for the tow, the company was never removed from our rotation tow list.