10.72.110 Vehicle impoundment.
(1) Members of the police department are authorized to remove a vehicle from a street or highway to the nearest garage or other place of safety or to a garage designated or maintained by the police department or otherwise maintained by this city, under the circumstances hereinafter enumerated:
(a) When any vehicle is left unattended upon any bridge, viaduct, or causeway, or in any tunnel where such vehicle constitutes an obstruction to traffic;
(b) When a vehicle upon a highway (or street, including tunnels, bridges or approaches) is so disabled as to constitute an obstruction to traffic, or when the person or persons in charge of the vehicle are by reason of physical injury incapacitated to such an extent as to be unable to provide for its custody or removal;
(c) When any vehicle is left unattended upon a street and is so parked illegally as to constitute a definite hazard or obstruction to the normal movement of traffic.
(2) Whenever an officer removes a vehicle from a street as authorized in this section he shall report the abandoned vehicle to the Chief of the Washington State Patrol, and if the officer knows or is able to ascertain from the registration records in the vehicle the name and address of the registered or legal owner thereof, such officer shall immediately give or cause personal notice to be given in writing to such owner, if any record exists of the registered or legal owner in the state of Washington, of the fact of such removal and the reasons therefor and of the place to which such vehicle has been removed. The abandoned vehicle shall be taken into the custody of the sheriff of the county where it has been abandoned, and stored. In the event any such vehicle is stored in a public garage, a copy of such notice shall be given to the proprietor of such garage.
(3) Whenever an officer removes a vehicle from a street under this section and does not know and is not able to ascertain the name of the owner, or for any other reason is unable to give the notice to the owner as hereinbefore provided, and in the event the vehicle is not returned to the owner within a period of three days, then and in that event, the officer shall immediately send or cause to be sent written report of such removal by mail to the state department whose duty it is to register motor vehicles, and shall file a copy of such notice with the proprietor of any public garage in which the vehicle may be stored. Such notice shall include a complete description of the vehicle, the date, time, and place from which removed, the reasons for such removal, and name of the garage or place where the vehicle is stored.
(4) Any cost incurred in the removal thereof shall be paid by the owner of the vehicle so removed, and the cost shall be a lien upon such vehicle. (Ord. 282 § 105, 1968).