Police Harassing Agents in PA Prompts Pushback

“We will not be bullied into believing what we are doing is illegal when it’s not.”

GUEST EDITORAL

Numerous Pennsylvania agents have stopped visiting the Philadelphia police districts in recent years to report repossessions a change from decades of adhering to a policy in the police department’s book of directives. Simply citing we don’t have to!

Directive 12.5 which is in found in the Philadelphia police departments book of directive which in short is the employee handbook for policy and procedures for Philadelphia police department employees goes on to state that members of the department will inform anyone repossessing a vehicle they must report to the district with jurisdiction over the repossession location immediately following the recovery for inspection.

This consisted of agents having to write up their own police report known as a “48” form then turn it into the district operations room and an officer working in the district would come outside to verify vin (which they never do) and then go back inside and run the vehicle through NCIC and internal system known as PCIC for any wanted or stolen statuses. Then the agent would be provided with a signed copy of his report.

This process without any hiccups in itself, is a 30–45-minute process ON EACH REPOSSESSED UNIT meanwhile the agent is sitting in limbo with the car on the hook out front of the district blocking traffic, beacons flashing and simply a sitting target for a crazed debtor with nothing to lose that may have a tracker on the vehicle or knows the policy.

If the vehicle comes back stolen officers will force the agent to drop the vehicle or threaten arrest. If its shift changes, agents wait over 90 minutes. If computer systems are down district supervisors order agents to return vehicle to repo’d location and re repo unit when systems are back up or threaten arrest.

If the staff inside are having a bad day or have been repo’d themselves. Forget it, get your pillow ready, you’re in it for the long haul.

Pennsylvania is one of few states that require Repossessors to be licensed as such, they are governed, monitored and regulated by the PA Dept Of Banking and securities “DOBS”. As such they have made a motor vehicle sales finance act which is the law of the land in the commonwealth.

Following the return from covid. One, Montgomery County based recovery agency (which will remain anonymous) found that a GPS repo they had recovered and brought to the district had not had the title flipped yet to the new debtor and lienholder due to the overwhelming backlog of the PENNDOT due to backlog from limited employees returning to work.

Since the vehicle was still in the previous owner’s name, a sergeant with the 14th district ordered the agent to return the unit and going as far as even order a radio car to escort the agent to verify its return. The agent, knowing the lien was valid and still having access to the installed GPS. returned after the police shift change and recovered the unit faxing the repo order to the district and hightailed it out of city.

This caused the Montgomery County based recovery agency owners to review all actual “legal” requirements in notifying police departments of repossessions to come up with a simpler way.

The agency realized that the book of directives is not enforceable to anyone not employed by the police dept. Per the consumer code by the DOBS which is also adopted into the motor vehicle code simply states:

The repossessor of a motor vehicle shall give notice within 24 hours after the repossession to:

(1) the local municipal police department having jurisdiction of the area where the motor vehicle was located at the time of repossession; or

(2) the Pennsylvania State Police, if no municipal police jurisdiction exists.

“After reviewing this information with multiple attorneys. It was cut and dry we only need to provide notice! This is the law of the land it doesn’t matter what the police dept policy is, that’s irrelevant to us. It can be sent by pigeon as long as we have proof we provided notice we are good to go”

The city of Philadelphia is classified in the commonwealth as a city of the first class due to its population of at least one million people. This classification system is used to regulate municipal affairs and each class has different powers and limits.

This allows the city to amend certain state or federal laws to better the residents of their city. However, in this instance even if the city were to pass a city ordinance requiring agents to come to the district (which is currently non-existent) it would not be enforceable against agents based outside of city limits. Due to the preemptive state law set by the PA DOBS

“When we switched to a complete digital notification system utilizing our RDN’s email and fax features the suburban Philadelphia police departments went along with the program understanding the logistics with the overwhelming demand of vehicles needing to be repossessed.

We have dozens of saved emails and countless hours or call recordings into our office over a 3-year period of phone calls from Philadelphia police district commander’s, lieutenants down to regular desk officers in Philadelphia threatening of agent arrests, impounding of tow trucks, referrals to city and state enforcement agencies. All of which are illegal harassing tactics to get us to comply with something that’s not legally enforceable.

We felt that sending both an email and fax to the district was a fair compromise that they just wouldn’t comply with causing us to threaten them with legal action after they sent a slanderous letter to one of our direct lenders”

“We will not be bullied into believing what we are doing is illegal when it’s not.”

“We are glad we were able to pave a path for other agencies to better their clients’ needs like it did for us”