Tens of thousands of cars are eligible to be booted or impounded in D.C., but according to data obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, only a fraction of those have been found.
Photo enforcement tickets go to the owner of the car, not a driver, making accountability harder, and officials can’t revoke driver’s licenses.
Once a vehicle has two or more unpaid tickets more than 60 days old, that vehicle can be booted or impounded. D.C. currently has more than 38,000 vehicles in that category.
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In 2022, the D.C. Department of Public Works booted 9,300 vehicles and more than 9,000 vehicles were impounded. So far this year, 1,739 vehicles have been booted and just more than 2,000 were impounded.
One constraint in D.C.’s ability to impound vehicles is space. The District recently added a second impound lot.
Staffing at DPW is another factor. Currently, the department has seven two-person crews booting vehicles.
Cars are typically found by ticket writers who can run tags or by automated license plate readers that randomly spot a car on the street.
DPW has 46 employees assigned to towing and impounding vehicles.
Mayor Muriel Bowser says safety is a main concern for enforcement.
“Right now, we’re not deploying officers to chase down cars that have thousands of dollars in violations,” she said. “What I can’t do is send one of my DPW workers in a confrontational situation over a car and pay tickets.”
While D.C. can’t revoke driver’s licenses, it can prevent the owners of cars with outstanding tickets from renewing the tags, but that’s only for D.C. cars. The vast majority of these cars are from Maryland and Virginia. Also, outstanding tickets are sent to collections.
The Central Collection Unit has 5,427,965 open tickets covering 2008-2023, according to D.C.’s chief financial officer. In the past five years, CCU has collected $162,895,623. In accordance with D.C. law, CCU does not have the authority to report delinquent debtors to credit bureaus or garnish wages.
A task force is looking at traffic enforcement, and one of the recommendations likely to come from that is a change in the law allowing the District to boot or impound vehicles that are parked on private property. Right now, they can only get you if you’re on a D.C. street.
The vast majority of photo-enforced tickets are paid. D.C. collects about $100 million a year, and Bowser has proposed almost tripling the number of cameras in the District.
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UPDATE (May 3, 2023, 11:45 a.m. ET): The Office of the Chief Financial Officer provided an updated figure on how much the Central Collection Unit has collected from tickets. This story has been updated.
