In St Louis, MO the company responsible for handling seized cars is being accused of giving "sweetheart deals" for cars that had been taken from their owners. The St Louis Post-Dispatch reports that S&H Parking gave a seized car to the St Louis police chief's daughter in 2002, and sold her other cars at less than half the market price since then. A report from a local law firm alleges that Aimee Mokwa and "a number of unnamed officers" had been given free use of previously-impounded vehicles. Her father, police chief Joe Mokwa, denies any wrongdoing, but his officers responded to several accidents involving his daughter while she was driving a seized car. Not only was her unlicensed, unregistered seized car not returned to private ownership, but Ms. Mokwa was also not charged with any crimes despite having a blood alcohol level several times above the legal limit. In short, S&H Parking made big profits from car seizures, and gave the police chief's daughter a number of sweet deals to keep the gravy train rolling while his officers kept her out of jail. Of course, the police department's legal team says that the deals weren't improper since Ms. Mokwa is not a member of the force, and her father claims to have been oblivious. Absolute power may corrupt absolutely, but petty power is always abused in the most embarrassingly pathetic ways. (Hat Tip: Reason Hit & Run)
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Spoiled bitch.
Though if you’re gonna take cars at way below cost, can’t you do better than a Neon, Escort, Malibu (last-gen), and an eight-year-old pickup?
And what a driver:
“the Neon crashed into two parked cars and flipped onto its roof. She was uninjured.”
“Two months after buying the car, Aimie Mokwa was in another crash. At 1 a.m. one Sunday morning, she rear-ended a car in south St. Louis County. County police reports show that she had a blood-alcohol level of 0.170, more than twice the legal limit, but police never sought charges.”
“A Warren County deputy sheriff stopped Aimie Mokwa for a traffic offense a month earlier. Beyond finding the car had illegal plates and that she lacked a valid license”
May Aimee, her Daddee and his co-workers drive Neons for the rest of their lives.
Yeah…I live here. Doesnt surprise me.
Absolute power may corrupt absolutely, but petty power is always abused in the most embarrassingly pathetic ways.
very nicely said
Fired.
If a suspect tests for an above-the-limit BAC and they don’t write a ticket, it should be a firing offense. You’re essentially letting a potential murderer back on the streets.
Things like this are what drive me to prefer speed cameras over police officers. Cameras don’t make tens of thousands of dollars per year, don’t take bribes and don’t tazer people for being snarky.**
(** not that most officers do, either. Most are upstanding people in a very hard job, but it doesn’t take more than one or two per department to wreck it for a whole community)
The girl’s father does her no favors by not arresting her. She may end up dead due to her fathers’ indulgences.
Sherman Lin wrote:
The girl’s father does her no favors by not arresting her. She may end up dead due to her fathers’ indulgences.
Worse yet, she may kill someone else. Then I would like to see her father charged with second degree murder.
And fire his ass now, for crying out loud. What is this? Zimbabwe?
In Houston, a looong time ago, a friend of mine was arrested for DUI. Her pickup truck was towed and she was thrown in jail.
The next morning her boyfriend bailed her out. The police said she could get her pickup truck back by going to the tow company’s impound yard. The police gave her the address. She called me for a ride over there.
She called the yard and asked about her truck. They had no idea what she was talking about. They claimed her truck was not there. So she called the Sheriff’s department back and checked again. They swore this company had her truck. An officer said he would come over.
So we went over to the yard. Sure enough, no truck. WTF? The owner was a real piece of work, a squirrely character. They were acting really weird and avoiding talking to her. Then the Sheriff’s deputy showed up and the owner started sweating bullets. The officer started demanded to know where the truck was. The owner kept claiming he must have misplaced the paperwork or something and the truck must be in the secured lot. The officer went to the lot and found no truck.
The officer knew something was up, and was getting pretty pissed off. Just then, coming barreling up the up, is her truck, being driven like a bat out of hell. Behind the wheel was an under-aged, unlicensed driver. In the bed of her truck was an engine block. The kid hops out of the truck, walks in the office, throws the keys on the counter and tells his boss “OK.. got her. Where do I put the motor?”. All of this right in front of the officer.
The officer just lost it. The owner tried to shift blame by screaming at his employee for letting this happen, even though they knew they were not supposed to. The kid call BS on the owner and told the officer that he was ordered by his boss to use that truck to pick up a motor.
So she got her truck back, and as we left, the owner was trying to convince one very pissed off officer that they shouldn’t pull his towing license. I seriously doubt he was able to keep it.
After that, I can’t help but wonder what in the hell these impound yards do with the cars they are responsible for. Based on what I know about the characters that run then, I would assume the worst.
.
How do they spell C O R R U P T I O N in St. Louis, Mo. ?
Was it the St.L police department the one that had gotten itself in some trouble after a kid videotaped what was essentially harassment, after the video was made public, got caught harassing the kid again as revenge?
Another towing company scam: a senile neighbor got talked into buying a new car. He really wasn’t competent to drive, but now he had a new car in the garage. Keys in the ignition, of course. Before long someone took it for a joy ride, then abandoned it. After a few days’ worth of parking tickets the cops had it towed.
Almost six months went by. Whenever inquiry was made (the man’s son had learned about the theft), the cops would reply the car was still missing. Then an official notice of foreclosure (or whatever the term was) arrived: the tow yard was going to auction off the car to recover thousands of dollars of storage fees. The letter was addressed to the owner of record, which wasn’t hard to determine since the car was properly registered and tagged. The fee was some ridiculous amount, like $50 a day. The man’s son got a lawyer, and I just hope they were able to recover the car without having to buy it twice. What a racket. No wonder the city has to rotate towing calls so every pirate gets a share of the booty.
I can’t see the logic here. If her father didn’t know, what could the company possibly gain by doing his dauther some favours? I mean, it only makes sense if he knew? Or, do they honestly thinkl people are so stupid that they don’t add up the facts?
Sherman Lin Says:
July 22nd, 2008 at 1:37 pm
The girl’s father does her no favors by not arresting her. She may end up dead due to her fathers’ indulgences.
More importantly, one of the other citizens of St. Louis, you know the ones he has sworn to protect, could end up dead. I don’t give a rat’s ass about some drunk getting in an accident and killing themselves, but as far as I’m concerned, when a drunk driver kills someone else, that’s no different than firing a gun into a crowded room and killing someone and should be punished in the same way.
Saint Louis and Missouri in general is full of these kinds of corruptions. There has been rampant abuse of Eminent Domain; the State has taken over the public school system, the Aldermanic system depends on bribes and I could go on and on.
As bad as it was for the Chief’s daughter to get sweetheart deals from the towing company; it is worse that the whole issue was not investigated by the FBI or Justice dept. Instead, the city investigated and cleared itself. That is a star chamber if I ever saw one.
Shouldn’t seized property have to be sold at public auction? Around here, that is a basic requirement. Otherwise, law enforcement would have the keys to the kingdom.
My brother in law lives in St Louis and was amazed when I emailed this story. His application is already prepared and he is researchingthe family tree to ascertain connections with any serving policeman in the city. Watch this space!
The (fantastic) mug shot is available by doing a Google search for “Aimee Mokwa MyFox St. Louis”. It’s flattering. She was booked four or five days ago for multiple felonies: “…stealing a credit card, possession of a controlled substance and endangering the welfare of a child.” Don’t forget your state motto, Missourians: “Salus populi suprema lex esto” (the welfare of the people shall be the supreme law).
MoganQuitno gathers crime stats from the FBI and other sources. They list St. Louis most dangerous (ahead of four shining jewels) 2 – Detroit, 3 – Flint, 4 – Compton, CA, and 5 – Camden, NJ. Another Missouri city, and my nearest neighbor, KCMO comes in at #16.
reg_pfj wrote:
The (fantastic) mug shot is available by doing a Google search for “Aimee Mokwa MyFox St. Louis”. It’s flattering.
Holy *#$&!
MoganQuitno gathers crime stats from the FBI and other sources. They list St. Louis most dangerous (ahead of four shining jewels) 2 – Detroit, 3 – Flint, 4 – Compton, CA, and 5 – Camden, NJ.
I assume the stats for Saint Louis include East Saint Louis, right? I used to travel to Saint Louis, it never looked that horrible. East Saint Louis, though, wow…