VENTURA : Abandoned, Illegally Parked Cars Towed

A fleet of tow trucks fanned out Thursday across Ventura, and by the end of the second day 140 abandoned and illegally parked cars had been hauled away in Operation Clean Sweep.

Today, the tow trucks will resume the sweep in Ventura’s east end.

“We’re still going strong,” Ventura Police Sgt. George Morris said Thursday at the operation’s mobile command center at San Buenaventura State Beach.

Morris said officers on Monday and Tuesday placed notices on 1,387 cars that appeared to have been parked on city streets longer than the 72-hour maximum that the city’s traffic ordinances allow. Another 145 cars were tagged because they lacked valid registration or appeared unsafe, mostly due to missing wheels, tires and engine parts.

The sweep was necessary, he said, because the city’s parking laws have not been enforced regularly since May, 1991, when a budget crisis left a traffic enforcement position unfilled.

On Wednesday, 73 of the unsafe and unregistered vehicles were towed to the city’s four contract garages, and on Thursday, 20 tow trucks went after cars that had been tagged 72 hours before.

Traffic officers accompanied the tow trucks to minimize the inevitable confrontations. “People’s cars are real personal to them, almost like they are attached by umbilical cords,” Morris said.

Many vehicle owners caught in the sweep were resigned to paying the fine. “I was home when they just drove up and took my motor home,” said a man who didn’t want to be identified, as he waited at the police station for a release form. “I asked if there was anything I could do about it, and they said, ‘Not a thing.’ ”

Craig Johnson, who was waiting with his daughter April to bail out her car, said he had no quarrel with police enforcement of the ordinance. But Johnson was angry after a brush with police that he considered distasteful. “He talked to me like I was a lowlife--part of the criminal element,” Johnson grumbled.