Birmingham city officials are looking into recent, ongoing complaints about the practices of a towing company responsible for taking vehicles from many downtown parking lots, but grievances against the company date back at least a decade.

The company, Parking Enforcement Systems, has been subject to previous review and current scrutiny by the city council, and remains involved in a lawsuit with a driver whose car was damaged more than a year ago.

Meanwhile current complaints about “predatory towing” keep pouring in.

“These folks are modern day pirates,” Joseph Carley wrote in an email sent to a Lede reporter this week. “They are unabashed predators. Rude, arrogant and pernicious. I am a senior citizen. I went downtown last week for dinner. I parked in the lot adjacent to Levy’s and used the parking app to pay the $10 fee. I had left my glasses at home and entered my license plate number incorrectly. When I came out from dinner, PSE had towed my vehicle. I made an attempt to explain to them what had happened. They were completely belligerent. The tow of less than 1/2 mile was $170, plus the $10 parking fee that I had paid.”

Carley said that when he asked to speak to someone about the issue, “they gave me a number and said press 5. The recording instructs ‘leave your name, number and reason for you call and we MAY return your call.’ Of course, they do not respond. Downtown already has its perception issues to overcome. Add to that, predators like this and you begin to see why folks are reluctant to venture into the city.”

In a video released to The Lede last week, a PES tow truck driver was seen hitting a parked vehicle with the UHAUL attached to the truck he was towing and then, according to the person who shot the video, leaving the scene.

Records from the Alabama court system database Alacourt show that PES has been implicated for damaging vehicles before. Sheila Lovelace is currently in an ongoing case after suing Parking Enforcement Systems in September 2021.

Lovelace claims that the company owes her over $1,200 for damages her vehicle acquired while in their possession and included a repair bill from Joe Hudson’s Collision Center in Birmingham with the amount and charges shown.

She described her experience with PES as “terrible and unprofessional.”

PES disputed the claim but was ultimately ordered to pay Lovelace by District Judge Debra Weston-Pickens in July 2022 when the case went to trial in small claims court.

According to Lovelace she received a notification recently that PES had appealed the case to Jefferson County’s Circuit Court so she is waiting for an update on if her case will go to trial again.

The first legal case against PES to appear on Alacourt dates back to 2011. That case involved Michael Adelson, who sued the company for $285, accusing PES of wrongfully immobilizing his vehicle and demanding payment to retrieve it.

The case was dismissed by now retired District Judge Jack Lowther.

Adelson did not respond to requests for comment.

Just four years later, in March 2015, former AL.com reporter Conner Sheets reported that Birmingham City Council was exploring possible changes to the city’s towing ordinance for the second time in response to a high volume of complaints against the company.

Sheets reported that in 2013, Birmingham City Council made their first ordinance change to limit towing fees to $160 or less. This came after complaints about PES charging owners nearly $300 to retrieve cars that had been towed from within Birmingham city limits.

Jefferson County Commissioner Sheila Tyson, who was on the Birmingham City Council at the time, said in 2015 that the city had heard too many “horror stories” about PES and was looking into measures to ensure that everyone was being “treated fairly.”

In 2023 Tyson says that PES should have their towing license pulled for predatory towing behavior and their treatment of Birmingham citizens.

“They sit and wait even if the app [ParkMobile] won’t work,” said Tyson. “Down here off of Third avenue by the Alabama Theater, the next block up, that parking lot don’t work. Do you know they sit out there on the corner and wait for you to come? And when they see you trying to park and put your money in that little bitty slot thing, if it don’t work and you park anyway you know they’ll tow your car. They do it all of the time.”

“I think that’s not fair. Like a speed trap? That’s a parking trap… You might as well call us Brookside.”

Tyson’s reference to Brookside compared the actions of Parking Enforcement to a nearby town which became known nationally because of a series of investigative AL.com stories in 2022 detailing how the police department turned a speed trap into a substantial revenue-generating operation targeting drivers, leading to investigations and interventions by county, state and federal authorities, the dismantling of the police force, and multiple lawsuits.

Tyson also referenced the fatal shooting of Adarius Jamar Peterson that occurred at the Parking Enforcement Systems lot at 2605 5th Ave. South on Sept. 29, 2022. Police said that Peterson, who had a car at the lot, had an encounter with a Parking Enforcement employee that resulted in his being fatally shot. A tow truck driver was initially detained, but not charged after the District Attorney’s Office ruled the shooting a justifiable homicide.

“They shot somebody,” said Tyson. “So, what kind of protection to the citizens have against this towing company if they’re allowing them to come up and shoot the citizens?”

Andy Mayer, owner of Parking Enforcement Systems, currently declines to comment on the record about any of the controversy relating to his towing company’s practices. He did not return calls in reference to this story.

In 2015, however, he defended the way he and his drivers do business in Sheet’s AL.com story.

Mayer said then that Parking Enforcement Systems’ practices are fully within the law, and that the onus is on drivers to ensure that they park legally.

“We tow vehicles that fail to abide by the parking rules that are posted on the tow away signs at each parking area 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, as instructed to by our clients,” he said in an emailed statement. “It is never okay to disregard someone’s posted rules on their private property no matter what time of day or night that it is.”

Mayer added that his company is hired by the owners of bars, restaurants, office buildings and other properties in order to enforce their particular parking rules.

“We are a non-consensual towing company, not a parking lot owner,” he added. “We do not make the rules for parking lots, however we do enforce the owner’s rules through towing as stated on the signage at the entrance of each parking lot we enforce.”

Birmingham Councilwoman Valerie Abbott said in 2015 that she understood both sides of the towing issue. Now, in 2023, Abbot said the city needs to take a closer look at towing policies and to determine what can be done.

Abbott added that private property owners may be part of the problem, if they aren’t following city policies.

“The poor people that come and park all over these people’s private property — just having one sign on a dark night doesn’t seem to give them sufficient notification that the parking lot is available or not available,” said Abbott. “We require signage, but they’re also supposed to delineate parking with a sign, and I don’t think everybody complies.”

Councilman Darrell O’ Quinn, chair of the city’s Transportation Committee, agreed with Abbott that there needs to be policy change but said it’s in the hands of the public safety committee.

“It’s the public safety committee that actually approves the licensing for the towing companies,” said O’ Quinn. “So, this is not a new issue. Folks have been complaining about this for quite a while. My thought has always been that it’s really something that the public safety committee ought to take up.”

Councilor LaTonya Tate, a member of the council’s public safety committee, declined to comment on any future plans from the committee to deal with the widespread complaints about parking. In an interview earlier this month, however, she said she was looking further into the issue.

O’ Quinn said that councilors were working to use public input to possibly amend the city’s towing and booting ordinances.

“There’s definitely a discussion currently happening amongst the council about gathering public input on how the relevant ordinances need to be amended,” said O’ Quinn. “So, there’s several important stakeholders. The property owners, the towing companies, and then the general public that’s utilizing these lots are being impacted by towing services.

“…All of the discussion that’s happening in the community is also happening in City Hall,” he said. “There’s a desire to take action to address the situation. We just haven’t arrived yet to a point where we’ve set a date and established context for how we want to gather that public input. But we feel certain that it’s going to happen in the near future.”

O’ Quinn added that one way Birmingham residents could provide input is by filing police reports with Birmingham Police Department after incidents with Parking Enforcement. He said that currently the number of police reports does not correspond with the number of complaints made about PES.

Sgt. Monica Law of the Birmingham Police Department said in an earlier interview that based on the incident reports they have received so far, PES has not broken any laws.