Cranston, RI Parking Rules: Towing & Impound Rights (2026)

Cranston separates the ordinary police tow from the punitive one. Under Cranston Code of Ordinances § 10.36.050(A), no officer may boot or impound a vehicle for unpaid parking citations on their own judgment. A judge of the Cranston Municipal Court must first sign an order, and the order can only issue once five or more parking tickets or traffic citations have been written against that vehicle and have stayed outstanding and delinquent for more than fifteen days. The ordinance names the Denver Boot expressly as an alternative to towing.

The notice track is spelled out in § 10.36.050(B). For a vehicle registered in Rhode Island, the city mails a notice of non-compliance and an order to respond to the municipal court by registered or certified mail to the owner of record. That notice must tell the registrant they may appear at any session of the municipal court during the following fourteen days and request a hearing on whether the vehicle should be towed, seized or impounded at all. If twenty-one days pass from the mailing date with no appearance, the judge issues the written tow or boot order to the Cranston police department. A vehicle registered outside Rhode Island gets a longer clock: the notice goes to the registrar of motor vehicles of the state where it is registered, the registrant has twenty-one days to appear, and the court order cannot issue for twenty-eight days.

Once the vehicle is in the lot, § 10.36.050(B)(5) requires the police department to keep a record of it and, when the registrant or another authorized person asks, to tell them they may appear at the next regular session of the municipal court to seek a hearing on the towing, on liability for the charges arising from it, and for arraignment on the outstanding violations. The registrant may pay the outstanding traffic or parking fines or instead deposit sufficient security with the court if the fines are being contested. The towing and storage charge set by § 10.36.010(C) must be paid before release. Payment alone is not enough, though: § 10.36.050(B)(7) forbids the Cranston police department from releasing a scofflaw impound unless the clerk of the municipal court issues written notice to do so.

Disposal is court-controlled as well. Section 10.36.050(B)(8) bars any tow company, garage, the police department or the city from selling an impounded vehicle except by written order of the municipal court. Where no state law applies, the ordinance sets out its own path: the vehicle must sit unclaimed for one month with the owner unknown, or a known owner must fail for ten days after receiving a registered-mail notice to take possession, before the department may sell it at public auction. Notice of the sale, with a description of the property, has to be published once in each of three successive weeks in a newspaper published in Cranston.

Elsewhere in the same chapter Cranston hands the motorist rights that survive the tow. Under § 10.36.020(B), a driver whose vehicle is disabled or obstructing a highway is to be directed to call or designate a towing service of his or her own choice, and only if that driver refuses, is unable, or is not readily available does the police department call an approved service. Section 10.36.030 bars the operator from further moving, altering or repairing the vehicle in any manner or form without the written consent of the owner, the operator, or an agent duly authorized in writing. Section 10.36.040 gives the owner the right to regain immediate possession from the towing service company upon payment of the charges set out in the chapter.

Snow tows run on a separate schedule. Section 10.16.050 lets the storm emergency commission appoint its own towing agents, who must post a bond with the city treasurer in a sum satisfactory to the commission and in a form satisfactory to the city solicitor, or else show they already meet Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission standards and carry sufficient liability insurance or a bond posted with that commission. A list of storm-towed vehicles is kept at police headquarters so an owner can learn where the car went, but the ordinance adds that failure to list a vehicle creates no liability for the city, and that the city is not liable for damage or injury to the vehicles towed or for damage or loss to their contents. The storm rates run by weight class: $25.00 days and $30.00 nights for passenger vehicles and two-axle trucks under two and one-half tons, $30.00 and $35.00 for two-axle trucks of two and one-half tons or more, $35.00 and $40.00 for trucks with more than two axles, and a $50.00 basic fee plus $30.00 per hour of labor for trailer trucks. Nights are defined there as 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 a.m. every day. A flatbed carrier or special auxiliary towing equipment adds $10.00. Storage is $8.00 per day outdoors and $10.00 per day indoors, running after the first four hours following the tow.

Rhode Island regulates tow operators as common carriers at the state level, so a tariff rather than the city sets the ceiling in places, and Cranston writes that in rather than around it. Section 10.36.010(C) sends commercial vehicles with a gross vehicle weight of twelve thousand pounds or more to the individual carrier tariff on file with the Rhode Island Department of Public Utilities, and § 10.20.070(A) calculates the cost of redeeming a junked or inoperable vehicle at the transport and storage tariffs on file with the public utilities commission. Section 10.20.090 adds a local accountability layer that is easy to miss: every authorized tow company must file a monthly report with the police department showing an accounting of vehicles towed, vehicles released, and fees collected.