The city of Chicago, burdened with massive debt, is impounding innocent people’s cars and charging the owners thousands of dollars to get them back, according to Reason magazine.

When Mayor Rahm Emanuel assumed office in 2011, “the city was facing a $650 million annual budget gap, not to mention billions upon billions of dollars in unfunded public pension liabilities,” writes C. J. Ciaramella. Rather than address the underlying cause of the problem, namely overspending and overpromising, Emanuel chose to hike scores of taxes and fees. He also vastly expanded the number of offenses that could lead to vehicle impoundment with associated steep fines.

Chicago’s “aggressive vehicle impound program … impounds cars when the owner beats a criminal case or isn’t charged with a crime in the first place,” reports Ciaramella. “It impounds cars even when the owner isn’t even driving, like when a child is borrowing a parent’s car.” As a result, the city “fined motorists more than $17 million between March 2017 and March of this year for 31 different types of offenses,” and it “issued more vehicle violations per adult in 2016 than New York City or Los Angeles, raising $264 million in the process” and triggering other fines on the same vehicle owners.

Emanuel’s program of soaking Chicagoans has succeeded to some degree: The city’s deficit has fallen significantly, though it is expected to resume rising next year. But the program’s victims are hardly celebrating this temporary improvement in the city’s finances. Chicago leads the nation in Chapter 13 bankruptcy filings, many of which involve debt to the city. More at: https://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/item/28841-chicago-impounding-cars-to-pay-debt