Los Angeles County, CA Parking Rules: Towing & Impound Rights (2026)

Reach first, because it decides whether this is the page you need. The Los Angeles County traffic ordinance, Title 15, Division 1, is county law for unincorporated territory only. 030 narrows it further: except where explicitly stated otherwise, Division 1 does not reach state highways or private streets. So a tow in Long Beach, Pasadena, Santa Monica, Pomona or any other incorporated city is governed by that city, not by this chapter. Only two provisions face outward. 030 requires a County tow truck license for operating a tow truck on any public highway except a truck already holding a current regulatory license issued by a city within the county.

Tow-away zones are not automatic. 510 the Board of Supervisors must first find that traffic volume or other conditions at a location make ordinary criminal parking penalties insufficient to prevent illegal parking, and only then may it direct the Commissioner to post signs reading "Tow Away Zone" or otherwise warning that illegally parked vehicles will be removed. 520 then permits removal to a garage or other place of safety from a posted location. 200 works differently again, as a standing duty rather than a discretionary power: the Sheriff shall remove to a safe place every vehicle parked or left standing on a highway for 72 or more consecutive hours, and the section defines "safe place" to include any garage, parking lot or open space owned by, maintained by or under the jurisdiction of the county, and every privately owned garage whose proprietor will accept the vehicle.

Notice obligations run to the owner and to the storage yard. 530 requires the Sheriff, on removing a vehicle under Part 4, to notify the owner in writing immediately of the removal, the grounds for it and the place the vehicle went, whenever the name and address can be read from the registration in the vehicle or obtained from California DMV records, and to deliver a copy of that notice to the proprietor of any public garage holding the vehicle. 540 requires an immediate written report to the Department of Motor Vehicles at Sacramento on a DMV form, describing the vehicle, the date, time and place of removal, the grounds for it, and the name of the storage location, with a copy filed with the garage proprietor.

The County built one impound program of its own. 9 to remove vehicles parked to advertise their own private sale. 190, and any posted County park facility. 342: the vehicle must have been issued a notice of parking violation for the same offense within the past 30 days, that notice must have warned that a further violation could lead to impoundment and that moving the vehicle to another listed street would not help while the for-sale signage stayed on it, it must have listed the covered streets, and the citation must have issued at least 24 hours before the tow.

343 then supplies the post-storage hearing quoted above. What the County Code does not do matters as much here. 5 anywhere in the code; the phrase "official police garage" does not appear in it at all. Sheriff tow charges therefore come from the Department’s contracted tow operators and the agreements approved for them, not from an ordinance a reader can look up. For a tow off private property the controlling law is state law, Vehicle Code Section 22658, which requires the property owner or an authorized agent to be present and authorize the tow or the required sign to have been posted, gives an owner who returns before the truck leaves the right to pay no more than half the normal tow charge, and requires the storage lot to accept a credit card.

270, which makes it an offense to park in any private driveway or on any public or private property other than a highway without the express or implied consent of the owner or person in lawful possession.