The sticker says illegally parked.
So you broke a law?

If you want to put out some of your own:

LOL
That one doesn't say "officers signature".
OP, we want to know if it was LEO or a fake officer.

That has nothing to do with the police. ??. Look at the reasons on there… Do you think the cops care if you don’t have a parking permit or blocked a trash can in an apartment complex?  Your apartment management and the towing company they contract to does though.  Talk to them.  Or call the cops and ask if they put a silly little sticker with a goofy cartoon tow hook on there with no references to state statutes or agency name (they didn’t).

That's not from the pd, that's your apartment complex giving the authority to the tow company.

Stake it out and do the needful if you encounter someone trying to steal your car.

Yep.

He is lucky he didn’t get shot.

Maybe it didn’t come from your parking lot at all but some other parking lot.
I had a maintenance guy come and threaten to boot my car for parking at my buddies complex while we ate lunch.
Only 1 car per unit apparently and since I was giving him rides because his house was between my house and close to work his car was home taking up his one allotted spot.
This was at lunch time during the day when 90% of the complex lot was empty while every one was at work and we were only going to be there maybe 20 minutes to eat a sandwhich.

A Townhouse community I used to live in had rules about vehicles with expired tags being towed if left parked.

It was really to keep people from dumping cars in the parking lot, or keeping old busted cars parked there.

It was rarely enforced, especially in your case (recently expired).  The only time I saw it enforced was when there was a problem with one unit parking multiple cars that had no plates there and just leaving them.

That doesn't look like a police tow notice, and most likely the towing company your complex has a relationship with.

Kind of a dick move to do it so quickly.....

Something is fishy here. LE can run the tag and it will show that the tag has been paid for. I would call the LE agency that issued this ticket and ask for some answers. If you pay online, you can print a receipt that shows that the tags are good and a temp registration until the tags arrive that is good for 15 days.

If this is a private lot, LE cant simply come on the property, on their own and legally tow it without being told to do so. A car not on a public road, doesnt have to have a valid tag and if it doesnt, it will be towed. If this were true, they could tow it out of your drive way.

Someone called them them. Call the LE office and find out.

60 days..

I stopped fooling with the DMV years ago. I go to the title transfer places that do the DMV work. You pay a small fee for their service, but  it it’s worth it not to deal personally with the DMV.

Part of your lease probably says that all vehicles must be properly registered and insured. They contract a tow company to cruise the lot and remove any cars with expired tags.

You’re fucked, unless you can show that at the time of towing the car was registered. Then you get to fight the tow company, and it ain’t worth a $100-$200 impound fee. So you’re fucked.

Get ready for some great news.

You could do your renewals on the same machine you used to make that post.  You could do it at midnight, naked, drinking a beer while watching World of Tanks(the French one, with subtitles) if you wanted to.  Its amazing.  Its what the kids do.

And I’d just like to add that OP deserves a huge round of applause, as this thread made me remember that MY registration expired 2 days ago, and I just renewed it online.

Jesus OP- you would have much better served posting this in the hometown forum as these laws vary by state and even by city/county in the same state.

So I’ll answer you first question of what gives officers the authority. The property owner does if local laws allow. The property owner either calls the PD or has issued the PD an enforcement letter.

Also no street cop is looking for this stuff in parking lots. So if you got this from the police, which I doubt, it was because the manager of the property called them or a neighbor did.

However, what you are holding does not look like something issued by police. It looks like a warning issued by a private tow company. In this case, again, the property owner has entered into a contract for towing with a private tow company. I would suggest reading your HOA by laws or rent agreement. In Virginia, under state law, private tow companies can enter into contracts to tow cars from private property. Sometimes it is like legalized robbery and it’s BS. Be glad they gave a warning and did not just tow it.

I suggest parking on the street until you get the stickers or trying to call the tow company and your HOA. I doubt calling will do any good because the tow companies make money by towing your car. They have zero access to DMV computer system, so even if the system is updated electronically, the shit heads- I mean tow companies have no clue.

I would suggest going to the county or town/city web page where you live and doing a search for trespass towing for the actual code sections.

Does your complex have a private security company that checks on the property?

If this was something official from your department usually they would say so and not have what looks like an elephant trunk on it?? Wtf

Not in NC. Here that is a private lot and license and registration are not
required. Only when you hit the road. The police here don't tow from
private property unless it is some special case.

I would not suggest doing that here in Virginia. The tow company with tow as soon as they see that and you would have zero recourse for it.

Property owner is most likely a scumbag. I'd give him hell for threatening to tow MY PERSONAL PROPERTY!

No, you were right to begin with

“Officer” is all it says. That’s not enough to be arrested for impersonating a cop

It’s meant to be intimidating. It’s a dirty fucking tow company

Have a lawyer send a certified "Demand letter"?

We don’t even tow for that.  We will if it’s stolen and the owner can’t get it / it’s undriveable, or was used in a crime like a robbery or drive-by shooting.

I run security for a large corp that owns several apartment complexes. We have contracts with tow companies that remove vehicles from our parking lots with expired tags, damage, parked wrong. Its on the lease that the renters sign. We can call them and have them remove the vehicle, but they do a pretty good job of keeping our parking lots clean.
  Im also a police officer and I cannot think of any legal reason that I could tow a car from private property for an expired tag in Indiana. Your state may differ

It’s not from the PD.  That’s a tow company that is contracted by your apartment to patrol the lot.  I doubt anyone called.

No idea about an officer's ability to have a vehicle towed off of private property but generally it cant be done.  That notice doesnt look like something an agency would use either.

In the state of VA, you can re-new your tags online. When you do, you are given a temp registration that gives you the right to drive it. Just bc the sticker isnt on there, doesnt mean the tags are expired. Towing a legal registered car breaking no laws, etc etc should be considered theft.

He also said there is nothing in the lease about expired tags.

Personally, I would be waiting there on the day they are suppose to come back if I couldnt find out what was going on in the mean time.

Sorry for the delay, busy night at work.

After seeing the post where you can order similar stickers off Amazon I realized that it's more then likely one of two things.

1st. My next door neighbor is a major Karen. She really likes me for some reason but she complains non stop about the rest of the complex doing shit while she's one of the worst offenders. She could very well have ordered some stickers and put one on my truck so the car she really cared about having towed wouldn't stick out for being the only one with one of these stickers on it. I doubt this but it's a possibility.

The 2nd. The rental company wanted a car in the corner of the lot that had a sticker expired from March, and has been broken down towed and told the tow company to remove it and they saw my truck as another vehicle that they could make some money off of. This seems more probable because the car was removed today I assume by the owner before the tow company came back tomorrow.

I dont get why the rental company is playing dumb though. They would be legally in the right to tow, so i guess it's a miscommunication or somehow they didn't know the tow company had been by.

I am planning on "staking it out" to see who comes by because I want to know why they signed "officer" if they are just some random tow company.

But as an interesting side note, they could potentially be in some trouble if they actually tow someone. There are no signs ANYWHERE stating "towing by xyz" and I double checked and there is no verbiage in the rental contract about vehicles. The only thing we did was give them our plate number. There's no parking assigned, there's no stickers or hanging tags.

So if they did tow someone, the person would have no clue who towed it and where, and I personally would assume someone stole my car before I assumed it was towed. And I'm pretty sure that's VA law that it has to be posted.

It's been a weird day.

I would guess the complex has an agreement with the tow company to tow cars with expired registration and the tow company did a "drive by" looking for revenue.  I would guess that is the complex policy they have to leave a note that you found before it is towed due to situations like yours.  If I continued to park there without the sticker I would contact both parties and explain to them and send an email to the person you talked to at the complex just incase it happens anyway.  This would be so you informed them of the problem and it is on the record, if you got a response that is even better.  I would also take a pictures of your car in current condition and look for any damages is if does get towed.

My 3 cents....inflation..

Out of curiosity, which county?

A sad reality.

Obviously my state laws don't control OP's problem, but I suspect laws are similar.
Here, either you have an agreement like that in the lease, or towing would be controlled by law.
And the law would say that if it's a marked tow away zone, or if it's abandoned, you can call the cops to ticket and tow it. The tow isn't legal without the ticket. But if you enter into a written agreement beforehand with the property owner, they might not need the cop or the ticket to uphold the agreement.

Didn't somebody in Texas have his Genesis towed from behind his (rented) office building without the approval of him or the landlady?

Don’t remember the make, but yes. I thing it was taken more for scrap. He went to the tow guys house.

So just an update, the tow guy never came back so that was kind of disappointing, but I did have an unsettling disclosure from the Karen neighbor.

This lady really likes my wife and I, and while she Karens out about shit that no one cares about, shes always been very friendly with us. She recently had a doorbell cam put in, and well she shared some unsettling footage.

Basically this random fucking guy, that I had actually seen walking down the sidewalk by the same parking lot mentioned in the OP and called my wife to warn about, has been basically coming up to our door, and standing there staring at it for minutes at a time, several times on different days.

He doesn't knock, and from what she showed me I think he tried the door to see if it was locked (it always is and deadbolted). Its extremely troubling because I work 3rd and the times are apparently 12 AM and around 5am.

Something about him seemed off which was why I had called my wife to warn her a few weeks ago, not to take the dog out because this dude was outside acting weird.

So I'm going tomorrow to get a ring or something similar, and extra deadbolts. I'm hoping that he comes back during the weekend or my time off so I can flank him by going out the back door, and come in from the front door down below and confront him about why hes trespassing and trying to open my door.

(Her time stamp was off, as this actually happened about a week ago)

Is that the Continuum Transmogrifier?

Don't be a racist, OP, assuming he's up to no good just because he's black.

What the funk?

He has a speaker. Maybe he wants to dance.

...All my neighbors are black..

My black neighbor was the one who warned me.

May I suggest making police report and provide the video or pictures to the police, as in tomorrow morning what ever time you wake up.

Not much they can do but at least you made the report to have on file in case something goes sideways.