A recently released video shows a tow truck driver for Parking Enforcement Systems hitting a parked truck with a vehicle he was towing, then leaving the scene.

The owner of the restaurant where the incident occurred, El Barrio on 2nd Ave. North, said he’s not surprised. He’s been wanting to stop using Parking Enforcement in their lot for years he said.

“They are an unholy, terrible company that I wish would not tow anymore,” said Neville Baay, owner of El Barrio. “They will tow people who are not necessarily there illegally and then the way they see it is ‘Well we towed your car; you have to come pay us to get it.’”

The incident is the latest in a long and continuing series of negative reports about the conduct of Parking Enforcement, a company that has contracts to remove vehicles from many lots downtown when illegally parked or in the lot past the time the driver paid for.

Baay described Parking Enforcement Systems as “aggressive and predatory” reflecting not only the numerous complaints about the company on social media sites like Yelp, Nextdoor and Facebook, but what residents have told reporters as well.

The incident captured on video on the afternoon of January 17 involved a tow truck driver trying to remove a pickup truck hitched to a UHAUL trailer from a tight parking lot. Anna Vanderbleek and her husband Jared watched it, recorded it on a cell phone and carried on a running commentary as it unfolded. Then they reached out to The Lede.

“Just witnessed a tow truck driver towing a pickup truck with a uhaul attached from the lot next to El Barrio,” wrote Anna Vanderbleek. “As they were leaving, the driver hit another parked truck with the uhaul, ignored it and drove off. Didn’t leave a note or anything – I have a video.”

Vanderbleek said her husband Jared, seen in the video, shouted at the driver at one point to warn him he was about to hit a gate. The driver stepped out of the vehicle but did not talk to the couple.

“He seemed like he was just trying to get out of there as fast as he could…. which took a while because of the tight space,” wrote Anna. “…They didn’t hit anything else that we know of. They pulled through another parking lot and turned on 1st Ave toward Avondale.”

The owners of the two vehicles involved have not yet been identified.

Baay, owner of El Barrio, said he noticed the driver struggling to tow the grey F150 and U-Haul when he was at the restaurant on Tuesday. From his vantage point, he didn’t see the actual collision in the lot.

But he has seen enough upset customers to know that the towing operation is impacting his business, he said.

Baay said customers frequently run back into the restaurant after they’ve been towed and on multiple occasions Baay himself has driven the owners to retrieve their vehicle.

He added that on one occasion a customer had left their dog in their vehicle for a moment and came back to find the vehicle and their pet missing.

“People get here, they eat, then they get towed and associate that with us,” he said.

Baay said he has been fighting for the last decade to use a different towing service for the adjacent lot due to the effect their towing has on his business.

A number of commenters have associated the towing service with the city of Birmingham, which has been taking hits on social media for allowing Parking Enforcement to conduct business the way it does.

Many comments, for example, in the I Believe in Birmingham Facebook group tag Mayor Randall Woodfin and ask why the company is allowed to continue operations in the city with so many complaints.

William Fitzpatrick, who had his car towed from a downtown lot in December, said that how Parking Enforcement conducts its business has negatively affected the likelihood he will spend money dining in Birmingham’s city center.

“Because of these predatory towing practices that the City of Birmingham seems totally ok with, I have stopped going downtown for entertainment and going out to eat,” Fitzpatrick said. “I have notified Mayor Woodfin’s office about this and have received no response. This is really a shame because businesses are now being punished because of the borderline criminal behavior that the City of Birmingham allows. I will no longer go downtown while this practice continues.”

According to the Birmingham Police Department (BPD), contacted for a previous story, Parking Enforcement hasn’t broken any laws.

“The City Attorney’s Office has reviewed some incident reports that we have regarding [Parking Enforcement Systems],” said Sgt. Monica Law of the BPD told The Lede. “They don’t see anything that appears to document a direct violation of the ordinance. There were incidents where a community member felt an employee was rude or failed to give information.”

There is a provision in the city’s ordinance for towing services that states the city council can revoke a towing company’s license for many reasons. One of which is “The licensee, his agent, servant, or employee has operated the business in such a manner as to be detrimental to the public health, safety or welfare or so as to constitute a nuisance.”

However, Law says Parking Enforcement Systems has not met this threshold in the eyes of the city.

“The statute … describes what it would take for the business to be considered a nuisance,” Law said in her previous email. “People may be taking complaints about the business directly to the business. If there are complaints about the business they may direct them to us (BPD) or City Hall.

“While we would prefer all businesses to operate with respect and kindness we recognize that some complaints were about rudeness and that is largely subjective on how it is defined.”

Parking Enforcement employees have been involved in previous incidents that raise questions about the legality of the operation. The most serious example was the fatal shooting of Adarius Jamar Peterson, 29, of Birmingham.

Peterson was shot inside the fence 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.

As noted in a previous story, Gardendale resident Helen Hays, who works downtown, said that when her car was towed to the same storage lot Dec. 23, the attendant flashed a gun when she went to pick it up.

Parking Enforcement Systems representatives would not comment for the record for this story.