Tow firm and city have old ties
By Todd C. Frankel, Joe Mahr and Tim Townsend
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
07/27/2008
St. Louis - When a son of the family that held a lucrative towing contract with police got married last year, Chief Joe Mokwa was there.
He was among hundreds of guests invited to the Kirby-Bialczak wedding at St. Stanislaus Kostka Church, north of downtown.
The wedding, along with a lavish reception of ice sculptures and Godiva chocolate at the Ritz-Carlton in Clayton, stands in sharp contrast to the Bialczak family's business, based just a few blocks from the church: a massive towing and vehicle storage operation.
Police-impounded vehicles are spread over acres of broken asphalt. Razor wire-topped fences ring the lots. Guards in elevated towers stand watch. It looks like a prison yard for cars. To get out, it's cash only.
The operation is at the center of a scandal rocking St. Louis police, already forcing Mokwa to retire.
This is where the chief's daughter and an untold number of officers received the free use of formerly impounded vehicles for years, the city Police Board has admitted.
Now federal investigators are looking into the relationships among police and the Bialczaks' businesses. There are questions about how the Bialczaks - a parking lot dynasty - engineered a near-takeover of the city's towing and impounding business.
There are also questions about the relationship between the Bialczaks and the former chief, who ex-workers say regularly visited the private towing operation.
The answers, at least in part, appear to include a former police officer hired by the Bialczaks to run their towing operation, and a series of decisions by city officials that, in the end, allowed the tow company to flourish.
THOUSANDS OF SPACES
The family's main business is S&H Parking, run by brothers William and Kenneth Bialczak. Their father and a business partner started the company in 1936.
William Bialczak, 60, runs the show today. He usually wears a shirt and tie. A soft-spoken, heavy-set man, he received attention as a member of the "Stanislaus Six," the lay church board members who clashed with the St. Louis Archdiocese over control of St. Stanislaus property.
S&H controls thousands of parking spaces spread over 28 downtown lots. They range from a $1.75-all-day lot north of downtown to $20 a night to park next to Busch Stadium.
The company gets some of its money from deals with the city. S&H has three contracts to operate parking lots on city-owned land.
One deal calls for S&H to pay the city $21,600 a year for after-hours parking at the city's Municipal Garage. The 340-spot structure sits blocks from Scottrade Center and Busch Stadium. If the garage, with $10 spaces, is filled to just half-capacity for the Cardinals' 81 home games, there is a potential take of almost $138,000.
The city's relationship with the Bialczaks stretches back decades and hasn't been without controversy. A state audit found that city officials undercharged the company more than $50,000 over four years when S&H managed the Kiel Auditorium garage in the 1980s.
But the audit wouldn't stop the city from turning to the company to help solve a new problem.
'QUICK FIX' LINGERS
In the 1980s, the city towed and impounded cars at a 12-acre lot on Ewing Street, just south of Highway 40.
But in 1991, the city had to leave the property. It was needed for the new MetroLink system. So the city moved to a site on Hall Street in north St. Louis - a site that, at just seven acres, was 40 percent smaller.
The city quickly ran out of space.
Private lots were needed.
S&H was ready.
The city's towing director, Denney Hunter, ordered his drivers to tow the best cars to S&H - "any late-model vehicle from an accident, arrest or stolen," according to internal memos obtained by the Post-Dispatch. The less-desirable ones, especially cars that couldn't roll, went to the city tow lot.
Claude Gunn, then Hunter's assistant, said the arrangement saved the city the hassle of retrieving unsalable junkers from S&H's lot. And the policy proved lucrative for S&H.
Back then, Hunter talked of expanding the city tow lot, reducing the need for outside tow companies. It never happened. Gunn said the city could only lease land around the tow lot. Officials worried they would get abruptly kicked off.
So the quick fix became permanent.
It's unclear how much each company made because city records are sporadic. But over a six-month stretch in 2001 and 2002, S&H earned more than $160,000 in storage fees, records show.
By then, S&H had begun its new venture, and brought in a new employee - a former police officer - as it moved into profiting from impounded cars every step of the way.
ASSET FORFEITURE
Over 20 years as a St. Louis officer, Gregory Shepard was nearly run over by a fleeing suspect. He was commended for work on the beat. He was involved in drug busts, too.
But he spent his last two years overseeing a little-known unit called Asset Forfeiture. It handled the front-end of the paperwork for a special kind of tow - when police seize a car they believe was used as part of a crime.
During Shepard's tenure, all seized vehicles headed for the city's own tow lot.
That changed after Shepard retired from the department in 1999 and joined the S&H team. Shepard managed the newest arm of the business: St. Louis Metropolitan Towing Company.
In 2001, two months after Mokwa was named chief, police agreed to allow the new firm to tow some of its vehicles.
That same year, S&H established Parks Auto Sales, a registered dealer situated at S&H's impound lots. By doing so, S&H's affiliates could handle the tows, store the vehicles, charge fees when owners came to pick up cars, and sell the vehicles that went unclaimed.
Shepard, still S&H's towing manager, declined to comment. He now lives near Eureka, where he is a city reserve officer.
The latest police towing contract - a five-year deal signed in January - called for S&H's towing operation to pay the city half the standard $100 tow fee, plus half the $25 daily storage fee.
S&H kept any surcharges, such as $40 to unlock a vehicle and $20 for administrative costs. (The contract was canceled July 18, when the towing scandal emerged.)
Perhaps most importantly, S&H was allowed to keep vehicles that were unclaimed 30 days after attempting to reach a vehicle's owner.
This was an unusual deal.
The city's contract with another tow truck operator is structured differently. Bill's Wrecker, situated near the city's industrial waterfront, has a contract to tow with the city's towing authority, not with the Police Board, as did S&H's company.
And Bill's Wrecker tows vehicles only when the city's lot is full, said owner Bill Thompson. He gets to keep $80 of the $100 tow fee, but he must surrender unclaimed vehicles back to the city, which then auctions them.
Thompson said he did not know how S&H struck its deal with police.
AN EVOLVING DEAL
Year after year, city police began sending more tow jobs to S&H, fueled in part by officers complaining that city tow trucks were too slow to respond.
Soon, all asset-forfeiture tows were done by S&H. And all from traffic enforcement. And homicide detectives. And the auto theft unit. And three police districts.
Gunn, who runs the city tow lot, said the evolving deal frustrated city tow workers who feared losing their jobs.
At the same time, the private tow company's offices on North 10th Street became a police substation, where auto-theft detectives checked for stolen cars. Former S&H employees recall a stream of officers coming in and out for another reason: free food.
Another visitor was Mokwa, whom former employees recall coming as often as once a month.
Brian King, an S&H driver from 2005 to 2007, recalled seeing Mokwa pulling into the lot early some mornings.
Former dispatcher Jennifer Sandt, who worked for about four years at the company before leaving in 2005, said she recalled three times when employees arriving for work were told by a guard to wait outside the office because Mokwa was inside, meeting with Bialczak and Shepard. Each time, she later saw Mokwa driving away.
"Then we were allowed to go in," she said.
The relationship went beyond business. While declining to comment further, William Bialczak acknowledged that Mokwa came to the April 2007 wedding of Bialczak's son.
And the head of the St. Louis Police Officers' Association has said it was well known that Mokwa and Shepard, the towing operation's manager, were longtime friends.
CREATING GOOD WILL
By 2008, S&H was towing more vehicles than were city tow truck drivers. The 1,000-space city tow lot, once bursting at the seams, routinely had 300 empty spaces.
The city tow lot still made a profit for the city, averaging about $1 million a year, after paying expenses. It's unclear how much revenue St. Louis government gave up by turning to outside tow companies.
Kansas City - which uses a city-owned lot and has roughly the same number of cars towed as St. Louis - makes nearly $2 million a year in profits.
S&H was appreciative for the business here. According to the Police Board's law firm, the company was "endeavoring to create a reservoir of future good will" with police. That's why it allowed officers and the chief's daughter to "test drive" previously impounded cars for weeks or months, attorneys with the Armstrong Teasdale firm said in a report.
In 2002, Parks Auto provided a 2000 Dodge Neon to Aimie Mokwa. She wrecked it. Parks then sold her three vehicles over the next five years, at prices far below wholesale value.
Armstrong Teasdale said nothing illegal happened, reasoning that the free vehicle use couldn't be tied to instances of officers giving S&H special treatment.
The chief insisted he never prodded S&H to help his daughter. He originally told the Police Board that he didn't learn of his daughter's use of S&H cars until this spring. But after the Post-Dispatch uncovered the 2002 crash, he told them he might have known about it sooner, but didn't think much of it at the time.
After the police chief's bosses - the five-member Police Board - questioned the chief's credibility, he retired Friday, taking with him a $100,000 severance package.
Those who know the Bialczaks aren't sure what to make of the controversy. Church members describe the company head, William Bialczak, as honest and decent. Even business competitor Joe Mollish, general manager of Central Parking Systems, said he had not heard complaints about S&H from lot owners.
"They have a solid reputation," Mollish said.
Now, S&H's towing contract with St. Louis is shredded. Federal investigators are interviewing police officers.
And the city's fleet of orange tow trucks is busier than they have been in years.
David Hunn and Jeremy Kohler of the
Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.
joe.mahr@post-dispatch.com | 314-340-8101
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stlouiscitycounty/story/43D50D2F7BA0CF0C86257493000E6B7F?OpenDocument
By Todd C. Frankel, Joe Mahr and Tim Townsend
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
07/27/2008
St. Louis - When a son of the family that held a lucrative towing contract with police got married last year, Chief Joe Mokwa was there.
He was among hundreds of guests invited to the Kirby-Bialczak wedding at St. Stanislaus Kostka Church, north of downtown.
The wedding, along with a lavish reception of ice sculptures and Godiva chocolate at the Ritz-Carlton in Clayton, stands in sharp contrast to the Bialczak family's business, based just a few blocks from the church: a massive towing and vehicle storage operation.
Police-impounded vehicles are spread over acres of broken asphalt. Razor wire-topped fences ring the lots. Guards in elevated towers stand watch. It looks like a prison yard for cars. To get out, it's cash only.
The operation is at the center of a scandal rocking St. Louis police, already forcing Mokwa to retire.
This is where the chief's daughter and an untold number of officers received the free use of formerly impounded vehicles for years, the city Police Board has admitted.
Now federal investigators are looking into the relationships among police and the Bialczaks' businesses. There are questions about how the Bialczaks - a parking lot dynasty - engineered a near-takeover of the city's towing and impounding business.
There are also questions about the relationship between the Bialczaks and the former chief, who ex-workers say regularly visited the private towing operation.
The answers, at least in part, appear to include a former police officer hired by the Bialczaks to run their towing operation, and a series of decisions by city officials that, in the end, allowed the tow company to flourish.
THOUSANDS OF SPACES
The family's main business is S&H Parking, run by brothers William and Kenneth Bialczak. Their father and a business partner started the company in 1936.
William Bialczak, 60, runs the show today. He usually wears a shirt and tie. A soft-spoken, heavy-set man, he received attention as a member of the "Stanislaus Six," the lay church board members who clashed with the St. Louis Archdiocese over control of St. Stanislaus property.
S&H controls thousands of parking spaces spread over 28 downtown lots. They range from a $1.75-all-day lot north of downtown to $20 a night to park next to Busch Stadium.
The company gets some of its money from deals with the city. S&H has three contracts to operate parking lots on city-owned land.
One deal calls for S&H to pay the city $21,600 a year for after-hours parking at the city's Municipal Garage. The 340-spot structure sits blocks from Scottrade Center and Busch Stadium. If the garage, with $10 spaces, is filled to just half-capacity for the Cardinals' 81 home games, there is a potential take of almost $138,000.
The city's relationship with the Bialczaks stretches back decades and hasn't been without controversy. A state audit found that city officials undercharged the company more than $50,000 over four years when S&H managed the Kiel Auditorium garage in the 1980s.
But the audit wouldn't stop the city from turning to the company to help solve a new problem.
'QUICK FIX' LINGERS
In the 1980s, the city towed and impounded cars at a 12-acre lot on Ewing Street, just south of Highway 40.
But in 1991, the city had to leave the property. It was needed for the new MetroLink system. So the city moved to a site on Hall Street in north St. Louis - a site that, at just seven acres, was 40 percent smaller.
The city quickly ran out of space.
Private lots were needed.
S&H was ready.
The city's towing director, Denney Hunter, ordered his drivers to tow the best cars to S&H - "any late-model vehicle from an accident, arrest or stolen," according to internal memos obtained by the Post-Dispatch. The less-desirable ones, especially cars that couldn't roll, went to the city tow lot.
Claude Gunn, then Hunter's assistant, said the arrangement saved the city the hassle of retrieving unsalable junkers from S&H's lot. And the policy proved lucrative for S&H.
Back then, Hunter talked of expanding the city tow lot, reducing the need for outside tow companies. It never happened. Gunn said the city could only lease land around the tow lot. Officials worried they would get abruptly kicked off.
So the quick fix became permanent.
It's unclear how much each company made because city records are sporadic. But over a six-month stretch in 2001 and 2002, S&H earned more than $160,000 in storage fees, records show.
By then, S&H had begun its new venture, and brought in a new employee - a former police officer - as it moved into profiting from impounded cars every step of the way.
ASSET FORFEITURE
Over 20 years as a St. Louis officer, Gregory Shepard was nearly run over by a fleeing suspect. He was commended for work on the beat. He was involved in drug busts, too.
But he spent his last two years overseeing a little-known unit called Asset Forfeiture. It handled the front-end of the paperwork for a special kind of tow - when police seize a car they believe was used as part of a crime.
During Shepard's tenure, all seized vehicles headed for the city's own tow lot.
That changed after Shepard retired from the department in 1999 and joined the S&H team. Shepard managed the newest arm of the business: St. Louis Metropolitan Towing Company.
In 2001, two months after Mokwa was named chief, police agreed to allow the new firm to tow some of its vehicles.
That same year, S&H established Parks Auto Sales, a registered dealer situated at S&H's impound lots. By doing so, S&H's affiliates could handle the tows, store the vehicles, charge fees when owners came to pick up cars, and sell the vehicles that went unclaimed.
Shepard, still S&H's towing manager, declined to comment. He now lives near Eureka, where he is a city reserve officer.
The latest police towing contract - a five-year deal signed in January - called for S&H's towing operation to pay the city half the standard $100 tow fee, plus half the $25 daily storage fee.
S&H kept any surcharges, such as $40 to unlock a vehicle and $20 for administrative costs. (The contract was canceled July 18, when the towing scandal emerged.)
Perhaps most importantly, S&H was allowed to keep vehicles that were unclaimed 30 days after attempting to reach a vehicle's owner.
This was an unusual deal.
The city's contract with another tow truck operator is structured differently. Bill's Wrecker, situated near the city's industrial waterfront, has a contract to tow with the city's towing authority, not with the Police Board, as did S&H's company.
And Bill's Wrecker tows vehicles only when the city's lot is full, said owner Bill Thompson. He gets to keep $80 of the $100 tow fee, but he must surrender unclaimed vehicles back to the city, which then auctions them.
Thompson said he did not know how S&H struck its deal with police.
AN EVOLVING DEAL
Year after year, city police began sending more tow jobs to S&H, fueled in part by officers complaining that city tow trucks were too slow to respond.
Soon, all asset-forfeiture tows were done by S&H. And all from traffic enforcement. And homicide detectives. And the auto theft unit. And three police districts.
Gunn, who runs the city tow lot, said the evolving deal frustrated city tow workers who feared losing their jobs.
At the same time, the private tow company's offices on North 10th Street became a police substation, where auto-theft detectives checked for stolen cars. Former S&H employees recall a stream of officers coming in and out for another reason: free food.
Another visitor was Mokwa, whom former employees recall coming as often as once a month.
Brian King, an S&H driver from 2005 to 2007, recalled seeing Mokwa pulling into the lot early some mornings.
Former dispatcher Jennifer Sandt, who worked for about four years at the company before leaving in 2005, said she recalled three times when employees arriving for work were told by a guard to wait outside the office because Mokwa was inside, meeting with Bialczak and Shepard. Each time, she later saw Mokwa driving away.
"Then we were allowed to go in," she said.
The relationship went beyond business. While declining to comment further, William Bialczak acknowledged that Mokwa came to the April 2007 wedding of Bialczak's son.
And the head of the St. Louis Police Officers' Association has said it was well known that Mokwa and Shepard, the towing operation's manager, were longtime friends.
CREATING GOOD WILL
By 2008, S&H was towing more vehicles than were city tow truck drivers. The 1,000-space city tow lot, once bursting at the seams, routinely had 300 empty spaces.
The city tow lot still made a profit for the city, averaging about $1 million a year, after paying expenses. It's unclear how much revenue St. Louis government gave up by turning to outside tow companies.
Kansas City - which uses a city-owned lot and has roughly the same number of cars towed as St. Louis - makes nearly $2 million a year in profits.
S&H was appreciative for the business here. According to the Police Board's law firm, the company was "endeavoring to create a reservoir of future good will" with police. That's why it allowed officers and the chief's daughter to "test drive" previously impounded cars for weeks or months, attorneys with the Armstrong Teasdale firm said in a report.
In 2002, Parks Auto provided a 2000 Dodge Neon to Aimie Mokwa. She wrecked it. Parks then sold her three vehicles over the next five years, at prices far below wholesale value.
Armstrong Teasdale said nothing illegal happened, reasoning that the free vehicle use couldn't be tied to instances of officers giving S&H special treatment.
The chief insisted he never prodded S&H to help his daughter. He originally told the Police Board that he didn't learn of his daughter's use of S&H cars until this spring. But after the Post-Dispatch uncovered the 2002 crash, he told them he might have known about it sooner, but didn't think much of it at the time.
After the police chief's bosses - the five-member Police Board - questioned the chief's credibility, he retired Friday, taking with him a $100,000 severance package.
Those who know the Bialczaks aren't sure what to make of the controversy. Church members describe the company head, William Bialczak, as honest and decent. Even business competitor Joe Mollish, general manager of Central Parking Systems, said he had not heard complaints about S&H from lot owners.
"They have a solid reputation," Mollish said.
Now, S&H's towing contract with St. Louis is shredded. Federal investigators are interviewing police officers.
And the city's fleet of orange tow trucks is busier than they have been in years.
David Hunn and Jeremy Kohler of the
Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.
joe.mahr@post-dispatch.com | 314-340-8101
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stlouiscitycounty/story/43D50D2F7BA0CF0C86257493000E6B7F?OpenDocument
