For Brian Cox, every parked car in Denver is a potential argument. And the perfect opportunity for street-level diplomacy.
The sheriff’s deputy wears a gun and a Taser on patrol, but his chief weapons are pink “Abandoned Vehicle” warning slips and an orange spear of marking chalk he keeps in a holster next to the stun gun.
Americans hate their neighbor’s car as much as they love their own. Cox’s chalk arrows and pink slips announce the dozens of daily showdowns between one resident’s desire to have a sacred vehicle left alone and another’s longing to have the rusted heap across the street hauled away for good.
The tensions rise as Denver’s growth adds vehicles to the streets and puts shiny houses and proud homeowners in areas like LoDo or Stapleton where abandoned cars used to find a safer resting place. Vehicles registered in Denver rose to 483,442 this year from 400,296 five years ago.
“I’m always conscious that what I’m doing is putting somebody in a bind,” said Cox, pulling up behind an aging BMW with long-expired license plates, tucked at the entrance to a cul-de-sac on the far southeast fringe of Denver.
Residents say they’re so far off the city’s radar, here at the corner of Exposition Avenue and Florence Street, that they weren’t plowed out from last December’s paralyzing snowstorms until February. When Cox arrives in his marked cruiser, aggrieved homeowners seep from the leafy yards onto the street, asking for relief.
“The neighbors could settle it”
Their first object of wrath: The dark-blue BMW. People who bought a house recently on the cul-de-sac found it abandoned in the backyard, got tired of looking at it and pushed it out to the curb. The Beemer’s plates went bad in 2004, and the back seat and trunk are crammed with custom wheels and tires.
Easy decision for Cox: It’s been marked with warnings before, longer than the 72 hours required in the city ordinance, and the expired plates alone give him reason enough to haul it immediately.
The tow rig is on its way.
“You want to take two more cars?” asks neighbor Jim DeFeyter, having ambled out to cheer the passing of the BMW from what he sees as his curb – though no one owns their curb space, a wisdom Cox repeats energetically throughout his day.
DeFeyter has his eye on a peeling green, ancient-model pickup with the rear bumper dangling on one side, parked across the street from his house. “We have an aerial view from the zoning department that shows it’s been there since 1998!” he tells Cox.
“I feel your pain on that one,” Cox chuckles. DeFeyter would also like Cox to affix a warning to a Honda sedan parked in front of the pickup, but before Cox can get out his pad of pink slips, the owner of that car wanders out with a newborn baby and a bag of garbage. He says he uses the Honda all the time, and he’ll move it, and Cox now is more skeptical than ever that the neighbors have a legitimate complaint about the green pickup.
“We try to flow with the community and what the community is trying to accomplish,” Cox says later. On the other hand, “the neighbors could settle it, but they don’t, and so we get a job.”
Steering people from tows
When Cox moves to put a chalk mark on the green pickup’s tires, which he and his partner will check over the next three days to see if it moves the minimum 200 feet required by law, he finds three or four faded sets of previous marks.
“This truck is getting chased,” he observes, meaning neighbors keep complaining, and the owner periodically moves it to avoid a tow. “So, do we go with the letter of the law?” he asks himself out loud. “The guy probably wonders why everybody is making such a big deal.”
Besides, DeFeyter himself admits his bright-red garden shed violates the local homeowners’ covenant, and he doesn’t feel like repainting it. He likes red. What he doesn’t like is green pickups. “I’m not just an old curmudgeon. I have to look at it,” he said.
The tow truck arrives for the BMW, and Cox believes he will leave the pickup question for another day. He’s already towed three cars from Denver streets by midmorning, a relatively fast pace. The Sheriff’s Department calls tows on 60 to 70 vehicles a month.
“I made 22 stops yesterday and didn’t tow anything,” said Cox. He sees that as a victory of sorts. “I had a lot of public contact, and I steered a lot of people from getting their cars towed. For four or five of them, all it took was moving the car to their garage.”
Cox and partner Ross Mickelson, who cruises in a separate car, handle dozens of calls a day. Cars stolen, stripped and left for dead on a side street. Boats on trailers, left for months as if a cul-de-sac were a private yacht harbor. Backhoes, abandoned by failed construction companies.
For the record: Storage containers, piles of dead branches or anything else lacking wheels and a VIN is not their problem.
Cox works from complaint lists generated by a public hotline, parking enforcement officers and police. But he also relies on drive-by judgment.
“Every day in this city, we get another layer of pollution,” he said, eyeing a blue pickup parked in a dead spot between homes. “I can look at the dirt on the windshield and pretty much tell if somebody drove that car yesterday or today.”
Chalking up another victory
Technically, Cox can immediately call a tow on any car with expired plate stickers. Unwritten city policy gives drivers about a six-month break before writing them up solely on the tags.
“Life happens to people. We understand they have problems,” said sheriff’s Capt. Frank Gale, the department spokesman who also used to supervise the impound lot and towing operation. “If it’s Oct. 3 and their sticker says August, we’re not going to take it.”
On his way to another complaint in far southeast Denver, Cox sees a car with old stickers and then spots the driver coming back from mailing a letter.
“The stickers on your plates have expired,” Cox says, leaning out his window.
“The new sticker fell off! I have the registration; want to see it?” the spooked driver offers.
Cox isn’t in a fighting mood. But he observes that more than a few drivers use current stickers for a newer vehicle costing more to register, leaving the old car without and employing the “sticker fell off” line.
“You’d better get that resolved,” Cox warns, driving off. Seeing the driver is a good reminder, he adds, that there’s a human involved every time he considers calling a tow truck.
So what will be the fate of the green pickup, stashed forlorn and unloved at Florence Street? A few days later, the owner has moved it back to the front of his house, staying one step ahead of another warning.
The truck owner is irritated that his neighbors keep complaining – the green monster runs well, and he does use it. (As a law enforcement official, he asked that his name and location not be disclosed in a story.)
The truck is ugly, he admits, but “there’s no law against ugly cars.” He wishes neighbors would just knock on his door, but they don’t.
Later in the month, DeFeyter reported that the offending pickup had remained in compliance and out of sight. Chalk up another temporary victory for Cox’s automotive arbitration. “I just hated to look at it every day,” DeFeyter said.
Cox now knows something about Florence Street – the inconvenient truck housed there and the neighbors. He and partner Mickelson keep track of countless trouble spots like this one, shaping their responses to the loudest complaints and the more egregious violations.
“We try to keep a running mental tally of fairness to the vehicle,” Cox said. “We’re working on starting a database. But we keep track in our heads, and we know where the problems are.”
Michael Booth: 303-954-1686 or mbooth@denverpost.com
