Paul Bass Photo
One of Monaco’s trucks in his triple-company lot.
Thomas Breen Photo
Reyes: Cracking down.
A controversial towing-company owner is back in trouble with the city after his employees allegedly started towing a registered nurse’s vehicle without cause — then tried to shake him down for cash.
Police Chief Otoniel Reyes plans to meet this week with the company owner, Anthony Monaco, and suspend him from the rotation of towers authorized to haul away illegally parked cars.
“It’s a new day,” Reyes declared in an interview with the Independent. “We are going to come down hard on these guys” who violate the city’s towing rules. Within the past year, the department has stepped up scrutiny of companies and periodically removed some from the list, Reyes said.
Reyes said two towers working for Monaco’s Anthony’s High Tech Auto Center were “lying in wait” for people parking in a lot outside the Sherman Townhouses complex at 559 Sherman Pkwy. in Newhallville on Feb. 2.
A registered nurse named Naim Langston pulled his 2018 Acura TLX into the lot to visit patients in the building that day. He said he noticed the two towers waiting outside with their trucks. He also noticed that the lot had no “No Parking” signs.
Langston, a former dispatcher assistant for the police department, now works offering nursing assistance to patients with mental illness for a company called Elara Caring. He has been visiting patients at the building for over a year, he said, without encountering any parking problems.
He said when he completed visiting the patient inside 449 Sherman, he came outside to find his Acura hooked to one of the two Anthony’s trucks.
He asked one of the towers why he was towing his car.
“He stated that I was an unauthorized visitor within the complex,” Langston later wrote in a letter to Chief Reyes. “I showed him my nursing credentials and explained to him why I was within the complex. I further asked if he would release my vehicle as a professional courtesy.”
Instead, the employee allegedly responded that Langston “needed to pay him one hundred dollars in cash” to have his vehicle released.
Langston refused. Instead he sat inside his car and called the cops.
File Photo
Anthony Monaco.
Meanwhile, both Anthony’s employees approached him. They hold him that “the longer my vehicle was hooked up to the tow truck, the cost would double, triple and quadruple in 15-minute increments.”
When Langston refused, “both operators became irate and began to drop the ‘f‑bomb.’ They became aggressive and hostile, demanding that I pay them one hundred dollars in cash,” Langston wrote. “I literally felt like I was being extorted.”
He rolled up his window and remained inside until Officer Monique Moore arrived. After speaking with everyone and checking Langston’s credentials, she asked the towers to release his vehicle. They refused. Moore, who was “kind, patient and professional at all times,” according to Langston, said she couldn’t do any more. He asked to speak to her supervisor.
The supervisor, Sgt. Brian McDermott, arrived on the scene. Langston showed McDermott his identification and “informed him that I still had six more patients to see.”
McDermott, after walking the complex and finding no “No Parking” signs, told the Anthony’s duo to release Langston’s vehicle, which they then did, Langston said.
After Langston wrote to Chief Reyes, Reyes asked Brian Pazsak, the department’s towing officer, to investigate.
Pazsak told the Independent that he confirmed Langston’s account. He said the Anthony’s crew violated two terms of the city’s towing rules: Towers must release a car without charge if the owner appears on the scene before it is towed, or even if the owner appears before the towers have driven away less than a block. In addition, towers may never take cash unless they provide a receipt.
Reyes said he plans to suspend Anthony’s from the towing list for 90 days. Ten towers are on the lucrative list, which entitles them to tow cars that cops ticket in no-parking spots (especially during rush hours), at spots blocking driveways, and otherwise where they’re not allowed. The incident at Sherman Townhouses was not part of the public work covered by the list, but the company’s actions constitute misbehavior that can lead to removal from the list, according to Reyes.
Anthony Monaco did not return multiple calls seeking comment for this story.
Monaco runs three legally separate towing business from the same lot on Gando Drive in New Haven near the North Haven line: Anthony’s High Tech Auto Center, Lombard Motors, and Fountain’s Garage. He has run afoul of city towing rules before.
In 2008, then-Chief Stephanie Redding suspended one of Monaco’s towing companies for overcharging one customer and using an unapproved truck.
Earlier that year he was accused of starting a sham second company to gain two spots on the city’s towing list instead of one. He asserted that his then-wife was separately running one of the companies on the property that he owned. (See video taken at the time.)
In 2009, the city discovered Monaco was using a truck on which he owed taxes to tow cars on which owners owed taxes. He was kicked off the towing program that year, too.
In 2017, the police department suspended Monaco’s company after a tower hauled an innocent person’s car away during a snowstorm, according to Officer Pazsak.
Suspend for 90 days? For a repeat offender - cancel his towing in the city. Period.