Practice of booting cars should get the boot itself, students say

By Russ Maxfield

October 21, 2008 | Many Logan city residents and students of Utah State University feel that the "booting" that takes place in the valley is unfair. Booting is defined as "the practice of dealing with scofflaws by attaching a boot to the wheel of a car, immobilizing it until its owner reports to the police or pays delinquent fines."

Dustin Fabis, a USU student studying business, said "The booting that takes place in Logan is an absolute joke. What gives booting companies the right to boot us? They have no training or knowledge of the law. I think that as far as Logan is concerned I could just buy a booting contraption and boot random cars demanding that they pay me whatever i want. There's as much rhyme and reason to that as there is to the company that boots us now! I'm from Chicago and you would never see such a blatant disregard for individual rights happen there. Only in Logan."

According to Fabis his roommate was booted for having the registration on his license plate expired by one day. Then when the roommate who was on his way to campus called to have it removed the company said they would be there within 15 minutes. Fabis and his roommate waited for over two hours for the company to arrive, which made his roommate miss two classes that day and in one of those classes he missed an exam.

Cache Auto Booting is one of a few companies in the area, but by far patrols more properties in Logan than any other business -- more than 60, according to Dennis Shaw, owner of the company.

"I've been booted quite a few times, and for ridiculous reasons," said Rodney Boudrero, a USU student in landscape architecture planning to graduate in 2013. Boudrero said he was booted for parking in the same place he had been parking all year. When he called the booting company to have them take the boot off and give him an explanation of why he was booted, they couldn't really give him one.

"I was so angry so I called the local police, but they didn't care to help either. They gave me some weak explanation about how it was out of their hands and I needed to call the property owner. It was just a wild goose chase of passing the blame onto someone else. So i called to property owner and she had no explanation either for my situation. She claimed that parking had gotten out of hand and they needed to better regulate it, but she couldn't explain why where i was parked was in any violation. It makes me wanna just stick it to the man and take wire cutters to their boots. But then you can be assured the police would all of a sudden take interest. Doesn't it seem a little backward?"

"Do they think that money grows on trees for stuendents?" said Tyler Russell, a graduate student in psychology. "When i was a student at USU i was struggling just to keep my head above water with all the student fees. It's not easy being a student. On top of student loans for raising tuition, rent, gas prices, and food, now I've gotta take out a separate student loan just to pay to get a boot taken off my car?"

Currently, Cache Auto Booting charges drivers $70 to have a boot removed from a vehicle, a fee that was increased from $50 in April 2007. That fee is regulated by Logan city, but Shaw would like to see that changed. He wrote a request to Municipal Council to try and get that regulation altered so he could raise the fee without the need of approval from the city. In that letter Shaw stated "Since April of 2007 expenses related to daily operations have continued to increase without any ability to offset them because fees are controlled by the city of Logan."

"Apparently Shaw believes it's more important for him to have enough money to wear golden shoes and a vest made out of hundred dollar bills than for us students to be able to eat our cup of noodles," said Boudrero.

"What could they possibly raise the fee to next," asked David Newman, a journalism student at USU. "Maybe they'll request a kidney in exchange for the boot removal. They can have mine, i'm diabetic and my kidneys don't work anyway. That'll show them. What will the booting company do with my kidneys?"

Some students have tried to fight this regulation in vain.

"I would hate to have the booter's job", said Adam Johnson a student planning on graduating in business from USU in 2012. "You wanna feel like you are making the world a better place but the booters probably can't even look at themselves in the mirror. Taking advantage of other people just for a dirty dollar. That's a sad existence."

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