Longview police eye abandoned vehicles

LONGVIEW — A thousand abandoned cars have been removed from Longview streets in roughly the past year, and the police department says officers have a new way to make sure a backlog of similar complaints doesn’t happen again.

Longview police reported last week that the department has removed 1,016 abandoned vehicles on public roadways since September in the city’s roughly 19-month-long plan to address the eyesores.

In March 2022, Capt. Branden McNew said the department had received complaints of 200 junk cars lining city streets over just the previous three months. Officers also identified abandoned cars while on patrol.

The department’s two employees who handle the towing or tagging of abandoned vehicles were not able to address the backlog and current calls, McNew said at the time. Uniformed civilian staff take police reports on all suspected property crimes no longer in progress, as well as abandoned vehicles, according to the department.

Hundreds of cars were impounded during the vehicle removals, and police say they now have a system to determine when repeat offenders repark on streets.

But complaints continue.

“We receive new abandoned-vehicle complaints every day,” McNew said in a statement released Wednesday.

In March 2022, the department conducted a sweep to remove abandoned vehicles, and in May the department planned to tow abandoned or illegibly parked RVs and store them on city property, as local towing companies had limited space for larger vehicles.

The department’s Wednesday statement said officers have had difficulty moving RVs due to state law.