Derelict cars

Neighbors don’t know where the blue Ford Escort wagon with four flat tires came from.

They just know they want it gone.

John Baldwin is on the case.

“Vehicle will be tagged, tires will be marked, and we’ll be clear,” Baldwin told radio dispatch. He put a tow warning on the car’s windshield.

He’ll come back to check it in a week.

One car down, 16 more to go. That amounts to a full day’s work for Baldwin and his partner, Ken Tadlock, volunteer officers for the abandoned vehicle program of SCOPE, the Sheriff’s Community Oriented Policing Effort.

Every week they patrol residential streets, issuing warnings to cars that neighbors say have been parked long enough to raise suspicion. The Sheriff’s Office notifies the registered owners, and if the vehicle isn’t moved by the following week, or if it’s too damaged to be moved, SCOPE will have it towed.

On Friday mornings at 7 sharp, Baldwin and Tadlock meet at the University SCOPE office and map out their day using a Thomas Guide and a list of abandoned cars that residents have reported.

Baldwin is authorized to write official warnings, or tags. Tadlock helps out with the legwork and the paperwork.

One of the stops is on Skipworth Road. Neighbors say the Dodge Caravan had been parked on the street for three months before it got bad enough to complain about.

“If people don’t call in right away, that’s what happens,” Baldwin said. “Someone comes by and bam – all the windows are broken and the battery has been stolen.”

Some cars are abandoned on the street and then stripped when no one’s looking. Other cars just appear in the neighborhood already damaged, sometimes beyond recognition.

“Some of it’s hilarious. Some of it just cracks me up,” Baldwin said, such as a car he once tagged that was completely covered with small, round dents,

“There must have been 2,000 of them,” Tadlock said. “It was incredible.”

It looked like someone had taken it to a carnival and charged people a dollar to hit it with a sledgehammer, he said.

The pair tend to their fair share of trash that resembles an automobile. Another stop on the Friday morning patrol is a hunk of junk on Avista Corp. property that neighbors noticed two weeks ago.

It resembles a Ford Thunderbird, but it has no engine, no hood, no tires, and there’s garbage overflowing from where the windows once were.

This is what’s called a “hulk,” a vehicle worth its weight in scrap metal and not a penny more. AA Towing puts the hulks in a crushing machine and reduces them to cubes of steel. The company does it at its own expense, and for profit.

SCOPE rotates through seven other tow companies to impound more valuable abandoned vehicles. If the owner doesn’t claim it in 30 days, the vehicle belongs to the tow company.

This time, Divine’s Towing gets to pick up a Mazda Protégé parked on a vacant lot on county property. Baldwin and Tadlock tagged it the previous week and it hasn’t been moved yet.

The license plates do not match the vehicle identification number on the dashboard, and it has a sign in the window that reads, “For sale, $1,000.”

Spokane Valley municipal code allows for the removal of vehicles that “create an attractive nuisance and negative aesthetic impact upon property and the community.” Washington state law says that vehicle abandonment is littering.

Officially, owners have just 24 hours to remove the vehicle, but Baldwin said they usually get a week or more. If the car is inoperable, the owner can ask the Sheriff’s Office for an extension while the vehicle is fixed.

From April 2005 to March this year, SCOPE patrols throughout the county tagged 348 abandoned vehicles, and 231 of those vehicles were towed.

It’s not that Baldwin enjoys having cars towed. When he comes back to check on tagged vehicles, he really wishes they were gone.

“That’s the whole goal,” he said.

Baldwin, a man of few words and with a gruff voice, always has his eye on the neighborhood.

He organizes disaster preparedness classes for Community Emergency Response Teams.

He occasionally disguises himself as McGruff the Crime Dog to teach kids about keeping safe. And for six years he has volunteered for SCOPE, making his own community a better place to live.

That means no abandoned cars inviting vandals and thieves to the neighborhood.

“Put it on their lawn, their driveway, their back yard, anywhere,” he said. “Just get them off the street.”