ARIZONA, USA — If someone misses multiple car payments, should the car be considered stolen? Should police help repossess the vehicle?
Those were the central questions during a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting as lawmakers discussed legislation to repeal a decades-old law.
"What business wouldn’t like to have the police as their personal collection agency and nationwide repo service at taxpayer expense?" said Arizona Police Association's executive director Joe Clure.
Police can be defacto repo men under state law if certain conditions are met.
The law states someone first must have missed payments for 90 days.
Then a dealership must send a certified letter. If the person fails to pay for 30 days after that, they are guilty of "unlawful failure to return a motor vehicle subject to a security interest."
“That law contorts that into a stolen vehicle,” Clure said.
Clure said during a traffic stop, police will see the car reported as stolen. Notes tell the officer it has to do with payments, but sometimes those notes are missed.
“Those are always high-risk stops. Guns come out, people get put on the ground, and people get taken into custody," said Clure.
Clure, multiple law enforcement agencies, and cities support an effort to repeal the law.
However, the law is supported by dealerships and lenders who worry about the message a repeal would send.
“It’s dangerous to Arizona to send the message-- that paying your bills isn't important to us,“ said Dave Warkentin with the Arizona independent Automobile Association.
He said after four months of missed payments; dealerships need help from law enforcement.
“We don’t want police to repo either, but we’ve spent four months trying to repo it, and at that point, we think it’s a stolen vehicle,” Warkentin said.
Warkentin told committee members that repealing the law may cause dealerships to raise prices on lower credit individuals because of increased risk.
Clure and other opponents to the law believe police should not be involved in repossession.
“What you have here is a civil matter, a breach of contract. There are remedies in law,” Clure said.
The Senate Judiciary Committee passed the bill 6-1.
Similar bills have made it to the Senate before but have been unable to pass.
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