June Repossession News

A couple of repossession have made the news recently. First, we have a repo agent getting arrested for taking a police officer’s personal car:

On May 30, the company Finest Towing was alerted that a bank wanted a car on Richmond Terrace for repossession.
Rodriguez hooked it up for a tow and abruptly found out the driver was a detective at the 120th precinct across the street.
…
DeStefano says Rodriguez was then surrounded by a couple of off-duty cops.
“Then they called over other cops, and he got arrested for having a stolen car when we had a repossession order for it,” DeStefano said.
The detective allegedly offered to pay Rodriguez for the three missed car payments, but Finest Towing says it’s illegal for it to collect debt. Only the bank can do that, and only the bank can authorize a car to be released.

And a tragic story out of Houston:

A Houston repo man has been arrested in the death of a 68-year-old man trying to prevent the repossession of his vehicle
…
“The owner came out and tried to prevent him from taking that vehicle, he jumped on top of it, the wrecker continued down the street,” said Cmdr. Kevin Deese, with the Houston Police Department, according to KPRC-TV.
…
“(The tow truck driver) didn’t ensure that this person was going to get the proper aid. He simply took the car and dropped it off, and that’s unacceptable,” prosecutor Sean Teare said, the station reported.