Towing’s ‘Bird-Doggers’ Race Streets for Business : Traffic: Officials link unlicensed operators to accidents and fraud. Drivers say they are entrepreneurs.

Rob “O” is carving up La Brea Avenue in a chrome-encrusted, amber-bulbed Chevy, gunning down the parking lane, slipping past red lights and flipping obscene hand gestures at unyielding motorists.

His favorite rap tape thumps from the stereo, emergency dispatches crackle from a hidden police scanner and 16 tree-shaped air-fresheners--lemon, lily of the valley, evergreen--dangle from the ignition.

To police, he is a bandit, pirate, vulture, scab--one of hundreds of unlicensed and sometimes unscrupulous tow truck drivers in Los Angeles who race to traffic accidents before authorized help arrives.

But Rob “O,” a 30-year-old veteran of the streets, would prefer to think of himself as the consummate professional.

“It’s not how fast you drive,” he said the other day, remarkably cool after the manic, unseat-belted ride. “It’s the finesse that you use to get there. The right moves. The right picks. You don’t get to be old by driving stupid.”

It was allegedly stupid driving that exposed the practices of the underground towing trade last month, when a 13-year-old Los Angeles boy was crushed to death in a rear-end crash that officers said was caused by a renegade driver racing a competitor to a towing job. Heriberto (Ed) Contreras, 21, has been charged with gross vehicular manslaughter in the Feb. 10 collision, which authorities called a tragic example of the havoc wreaked by unofficial tow drivers as they speed to be first at accident scenes.

“Whoever gets there first makes the money,” said Los Angeles Police Detective Bill Whittaker, head of South Bureau traffic investigation. “It’s cutthroat. To me they’re just a bunch of vultures.”

This is the business known as “bird-dogging,” where “Top Gun” meets “Repo Man.”

It is a world of scammers and schemers, speed demons and hustlers, many of whom form the first link in a long chain of fraud that officials say costs the California insurance industry an estimated $500 million a year.

But it is also a world of scrappy entrepreneurs and struggling family men--the majority of them African-American or Latino--vying for a few crumbs in a city that reports an average of 176 traffic accidents a day.

“I was raised in the streets,” said Rob “O,” whose moniker is embroidered on the chest of his heavy black parka. “Would they rather have me out on the corner, selling drugs, doing a drive-by? C’mon, man, this is legitimate. This is my bread and butter.”

Although its 468 square miles of often-congested streets make Los Angeles the bird-dogging capital of Southern California, local officials say that complaints about speeding tow trucks have been reported in communities from San Diego to Santa Monica.

Nationwide, three metropolitan areas--New York, Houston and New Orleans--have so many bird-doggers that they are known to the Towing and Recovery Assn. of America as “chase cities.”

In New York, a 1986 report by the mayor’s Tow Truck Task Force blamed bandit trucks for 7 deaths, 800 injuries and 1,200 collisions in the previous three years. In New Orleans, at least five people have been killed since 1987, including a bird-dogger who was burned to death when his high-performance fuel pump spewed gas all over his wrecked truck.

“A lot of people in towing are really trying to be professional and weed out these fly-by-night operators,” said Tim Jackson, editor of Tow Times, a monthly magazine serving the towing industry. “For us . . . wreck-chasing is just a bad word.”

To prevent dangerous battles over towing turf, the Los Angeles Police Commission more than 50 years ago established a system of official police garages, known as “OPGs,” that is still in place today.

The garages--one for each of the Police Department’s 18 divisions--have the exclusive right to respond to traffic accidents and remove disabled cars. They are licensed, insured and charge standard rates of $65 a tow.

But instead of preventing abuses, the system has spawned a kind of cat-and-mouse game. If police officers beat bird-doggers to the accident scenes, the official tow companies are called and the bird-doggers scatter. But if the bird-doggers arrive first, the officers usually allow them to hook up the damaged autos so the streets will be quickly cleared.

With those as the rules, the ride to a disabled car can be a gonzo, free-form drag race, with as many as a dozen trucks from all directions flying down city streets at freeway speeds. There have been reports of bird-doggers running stop signs, driving the wrong way against traffic, forcing motorists off the road and even waving firearms.

“These guys are absolutely insane,” said Ralph Cantos, a swimming pool serviceman, who was nearly hit by a speeding tow truck several months ago in West Los Angeles. “They’re maniacs. They drive like there’s no tomorrow. They have no regard for life or limb.”

In 1987, a bird-dogger was arrested on charges of vehicular manslaughter after his speeding tow truck collided with a car at a South-Central intersection, killing a female driver and her three children. But authorities, who believed the truck was traveling about 60 m.p.h. in a 35 m.p.h. zone, did not press charges when they learned the woman had a blood-alcohol level of 0.16%.

In February, when Contreras allegedly rammed a stopped car at 54th Street and Denker Avenue, his truck was traveling an estimated 60 m.p.h. to 80 m.p.h. in a 25 m.p.h. zone, detectives said. Jerry Williams, a seventh-grader on his way home from church, was killed instantly.

Contreras, who has pleaded not guilty to the charges, was known on the streets as a rookie bird-dogger with a long history of moving violations and accidents. While at La Cienega Paint & Body, where he worked for several months last year, Contreras smashed up three tow trucks before disappearing one day, said co-owner Victor Feldman.

“See, man, Ed is a young guy,” said Big Mike, 27, a pirate driver and former colleague. “But he was trying to do some things out here that vets be doing. He wasn’t ready for that.”

Life with this breed of urban cowboy can get rough. Fistfights have been known to break out among them over towing jobs. Recently, police said, a bird-dogger scuffled with paramedics as he tried to win a towing job from an accident victim in the back of an ambulance.

And last Valentine’s Day a tow truck operator’s companion was arrested on murder charges after he allegedly shot an employee of a Wilmington salvage yard during a 4 a.m. dispute over a towing fee.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Detective Steve Bernard, an investigator for the Police Commission. “It’s out of control.”

Many bird-doggers, however, contend that a few irresponsible drivers are making them all look bad. And if there are abuses, they say, it is only because of a restrictive towing system that forces them to scramble for their share of the spoils.

“I’m unable to break into the system, so they call me a bandit,” said Pop, 27, a bird-dogger for the last seven years. “But does that give them more of a right to tow a car than me? That’s a conspiracy. That’s infringing on the American Dream.”

Most of them are on duty seven days a week, at least 18 hours a day, living on a diet of fast food and No Doz. They tend to congregate in South-Central, Southwest and Mid-Wilshire neighborhoods, but say they will drive anywhere for a tow.

“Wherever it is, whatever it takes, I’m gone,” said Pop.

Like most drivers, his lifeline is a police scanner, which is buried deep in his truck and controlled by an inconspicuous knob whose location he insists not be revealed. If police catch him “willfully listening,” it is a misdemeanor, punishable by a $1,000 fine and/or six months in jail.

Since they operate under the table, nobody knows for sure how many bird-doggers work in Los Angeles or how many cars they tow. Last year, official police garages removed about 200,000 cars, although that number includes many abandoned and impounded vehicles.

Bird-doggers say they charge rates comparable to the official garages. But unlike the OPGs, which only tow cars back to a storage yard, bird-doggers will tow directly to body shops. There, they may receive kickbacks that authorities say range from $100 to $1,000, depending on the damage and model.

Despite occasional tales of those shops inflating storage fees or inflicting extra damage, bird-doggers insist the procedure ultimately saves accident victims both time and money.

“I like to think of myself as a consumer advocate,” Pop said. “With an OPG, regardless of what you want, that car is going back to their garage. I’m saving you a lot of trouble.”

Police, however, have little sympathy for the trade, even going so far as to stage fake accidents--complete with an old junker and debris scattered in the street--to snare bandit trucks.

Yet once they have them, officers concede, there are few laws to keep bird-doggers grounded. Sometimes, tow operators are cited under a Los Angeles code prohibiting solicitors on the streets. But they are never charged, say prosecutors, because of a California law that allows tow trucks to help motorists in need.

“If you as a citizen want to have a go with X, Y or Z Tow Company, have at it,” said Bernard, the Police Commission detective. “But you do it at your own risk.”

Indeed, tow truck drivers are often the point men in an elaborate web of fraud that accounts for an estimated 25 cents of every dollar spent on auto insurance premiums, said Ronald E. Warthen, chief investigator for the state Department of Insurance’s fraud bureau.

One of the most common problems is “capping,” the practice of referring accident victims to lawyers for a fee. The attorneys, in turn, are usually in cahoots with doctors who will diagnose fake injuries for people who are not hurt.

“At the tow yard, they told this guy, ‘Hey, you can make some big bucks,’ ” said Theresa Clark, a California Highway Patrol investigator who recently went undercover to bust a fraud ring. “Then they called the cappers . . . who picked him up and took him straight to the doctor.”

Some rings don’t even bother to find real accidents, instead staging their own collisions with the help of fake victims, often from poor or immigrant neighborhoods, who are taught to feign neck and back pain.

In one scheme unveiled last year, authorities accused a North Hollywood tow truck driver of being among the masterminds of a ring that allegedly made $25 million in false claims based on about 1,000 crashes staged since 1987.

“When we arrested him, he still had his tow truck ID on him,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Anthony Colannino of the major fraud division. “As near as we can figure out, that was how he got involved in this. . . . He just moved up the corporate chain, so to speak.”

Others choose to avoid such messy work, simply towing away any parked car that strikes their fancy. Such was the case, say police, of Lee (Pappy) Schurr, 65, and Ronald Isaacs, 52, both of Pacoima, who were convicted in 1989 of three counts of grand theft auto.

“They would tag the car and come back three days later,” said Bernard. “If the car was still there, they figured they’d just take it.”

These are not the kind of stories that Rob “O”--blue jeans creased, hair closely shorn, left ear pierced by a tiny gold stud--wants to hear, not when he hasn’t towed a car for a week or slept more than two hours in the last 24. But on this recent day, the tow truck driver was about to score.

A blue Dodge and a red Hyundai had just tangled at Crenshaw Boulevard and Rodeo Road. Five minutes later, Rob “O” was standing at the curb, hands humbly stuffed in the pockets of his parka, asking if anyone was hurt.

“I try to just kick back and chill,” he said. “They’re already under enough strain as it is. They know I’ve got a tow truck. They know what I can do for them.”

Carlos Ugarte, for one, wasn’t impressed. “It’s incredible how people try to make money off of your problems,” said the 30-year-old USC student, whose wife was driving the Hyundai. “I hate this stuff.”

But Rob “O” was having better luck with the owners of the Dodge. He instructed them to exchange license numbers, helped them interpret their insurance policies, scraped their bumper out of the street and got their signature on a tow order to a nearby body shop--all before two officers in a black and white patrol car had a chance to arrive.

“This is really the way we do it, man,” he said with a wide grin. “We’re pros out here. We’re pros.”

TOW TRUCK DRIVERS: THEIR BUZZWORDS

Like others who make their living on the road, tow truck drivers have their own vocabulary. Here are a few of the most commonly heard terms.

* Bird-dogger: One of many names for unlicensed tow truck drivers who race to traffic accidents before authorized help arrives.

* OPG: Official police garage. Each of the Los Angeles Police Department’s 18 divisions has one tow company authorized to clear an accident scene.

* Prowling: Cruising for accidents, a practice that can cost more than $60 a day in gas.

* Posting up: The opposite of prowling; often done in the parking lot of a gas station, mini-mart or fast-food restaurant.

* Jumping a call: Trying to beat officers to the scene of an accident by monitoring a police scanner. Can be a misdemeanor, punishable by a fine of $1,000 and/or six months in jail.

* Fading: Beating a competitor in the race to a towing job, as in, “I faded him on that last turn.”

* TA: Traffic accident. The Los Angeles Police Department, which does not take reports of crashes that only involve property damage, still logged 64,205 TAs last year.

* PR: Person reporting, or the accident victim, who usually has no idea why half a dozen tow trucks have just descended on the scene.

* Capping: The practice of soliciting business for attorneys, a misdemeanor under the California Business and Professions Code.