Chicago inspector general: police have seized no tow trucks since gaining the power in 2025

Chicago’s Office of Inspector General published an explainer on October 6 on how the city has responded to rogue towing. The office began a review of whether the city had implemented its rogue-towing laws, then judged the remaining risk did not justify a full audit. The explainer is not an audit.

According to the explainer, the city passed tow licensing and enforcement rules in April 2021 and updated them in April 2025, when the police department gained the power to tow and impound trucks that violate the ordinance. The report says that, to date, the department has not seized any tow trucks under it. To tow a disabled vehicle from the public way, an operator needs a city towing license and either a licensed tow storage lot or a licensed repair facility.

The explainer says the Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection took enforcement action on 329 of the 388 complaints received from 2021 through 2025, or 84.8 percent. It says the Vice Section of the police department stated that it received no rogue-towing complaints from any source between mid-2025 and March 2026, and that a joint task force with the Illinois Commerce Commission ran 56 missions from April 2022 to March 2025, with enforcement activity declining each year.