Denton, TX Parking Rules: Towing & Impound Rights (2026)

The article lives in Chapter 23 (Police), Article IV, and it is enforced by the Denton Police Department under Sec. 23-99, where the chief of police or a designee acts as "the director" and keeps the rotation list of companies eligible for police-initiated incident management tows. Sec. 23-92(c) gives a tow company one hour from the moment it removes a vehicle to email DPD the company name, the date, time and location of the removal, the vehicle description, plate and VIN, the operator who performed the tow, and the storage facility holding the car.

Sec. 23-94 requires a company doing incident management tows to use a state-licensed vehicle storage facility located inside the Denton city limits and to hold exclusive use of it, and Sec. 23-95 requires a private-property tow to go immediately to that designated facility with no unloading anywhere else. Sec. 23-96(c) then closes the usual gap in retrieval: the facility must accept payment and release vehicles at any time of day, with no restriction due to hour, holiday, or other impediment. Sec. 23-101(k) adds that release may not be denied because the company cannot process a card, and where a power outage or machine malfunction is genuinely at fault, the payment due is frozen for twenty-four hours after the owner is notified that card payment works again, documented on the tow ticket.

On the money Denton does set, Sec. 00 administrative charge that must appear on the tow ticket as "local regulation fee" and be remitted to the city by the last business day of the following month. 00 per hour heavy duty, and only with the primary officer’s signature on the tow ticket, a copy of which must reach the director within three hours. 00 per mile for an out-of-city drop with the first ten miles free and mileage counted one way. Heavy-duty recovery may instead be billed per pound on a schedule DPD publishes on its website, reviewable once a calendar year at the written request of two or more permitted heavy-duty companies, with no annual increase above half a cent without city council authorization.

Booting is regulated just as tightly. Sec. 00 if the vehicle is towed after the twenty-four-hour wait. Sec. 23-98 requires the boot to come off within one hour of the owner’s call, and the company forfeits the removal fee entirely if it misses that hour. Signs authorizing a private-property tow or boot must be at least eighteen inches wide by twenty-four inches tall, mounted with the bottom edge no lower than five feet and no higher than eight feet above ground, and must carry a telephone number answered twenty-four hours a day.

Separately, Article V lets an officer impound a vehicle whose driver cannot show financial responsibility or a valid license, but only after the officer checks the state verification database, and the officer may decline to impound where it would strand the driver or passengers.