Longview police remove a thousand abandoned cars off roads since fall 2022

A thousand abandoned cars have been removed from Longview streets in roughly the past year and the police department says officers have a new way to make sure a backlog of similar complaints doesn’t happen again.

The Longview police reported this week the department removed 1,016 abandoned vehicles on public roadways since September 2022 in the city’s roughly 19-month-long plan to remove the eyesores.

In March 2022, Capt. Branden McNew said the department had received complaints of 200 junk cars lining city streets over just the past three months. In addition to citizen reports, officers also identify abandoned cars while on patrol.

The department’s two employees who handle the lower priority call of towing or tagging abandoned vehicles were not able to address the backlog and current calls, McNew said at the time. Noncommissioned uniformed civilian staff take police reports on all suspected property crime no longer in progress, as well as abandoned vehicles, according to the department.

Hundreds of cars were impounded during the vehicle removals, and police say they now have a system to determine when repeat offenders repark on streets.

The statement released Wednesday says, “in most cases,” vehicle owners could remove items inside their vehicles before they were impounded.

But complaints continue today.

“We receive new abandoned vehicle complaints every day,” McNew said the in statement.

In March 2022, the department conducted a concentrated sweep to remove abandoned vehicles, and in May the department planned to tow abandoned or illegibly parked RVs and store them on city property, as local towing companies had limited space for larger vehicles.

The department’s Wednesday statement says officers have had difficulty moving RVs due to state law, but didn’t specify which law.