video, tape, Tax Collector Hits the Road in New Haven , Photos: C.J. Cuticello, New Haven's tax collector, demonstrating the BootFinder on a city street. The hand-held scanner is connected to a da...
video, tape, Tax Collector Hits the Road in New Haven , Photos: C.J. Cuticello, New Haven's tax collector, demonstrating the BootFinder on a city street. The hand-held scanner is connected to a database that immediately shows violations on a laptop computer. Mr. Cuticello said he brought in $10,000 from the first four hours he used the $25,000 device. (Photographs by Thomas McDonald for The New York Times [plate numbers in bottom photo have been electronically obscured])IF you are delinquent on your car taxes in New Haven, or driving a car that was stolen there, beware; the city is gunning for you in a new way.
This month, the tax collector's office in New Haven became the second agency in the nation to use the BootFinder, a hand-held device that looks like a radar gun and reads both moving and stationary license plates while searching for vehicles on which taxes are owed and those that are stolen.
Officials said the BootFinder, named after the lock placed on the wheel of a scofflaw's car or truck, is connected to the city's motor vehicle tax records and its list of stolen vehicles and license plates. It is also attached to a laptop computer that alerts the user to ''a hit'' with an audio and visual signal.
Mayor John DeStefano Jr. said despite the city increasing its collection rate for real estate taxes to 97 percent over the last eight years, it had not been able to do so with car taxes. He said the BootFinder would help because New Haven's large transient population makes it hard to find the 20,000 or so vehicles on which $1.25 million in motor vehicle taxes are overdue.
''Two thirds of the housing stock is rental,'' he said. ''We're also a big college community, and its difficult to collect those taxes.''
Mr. DeStefano also said he believed the BootFinder would keep taxes lower ''because everyone would be paying their fair share.''
Mr. DeStefano said New Haven doesn't use boots to immobilize vehicles, instead vehicles on which taxes were owed are being towed.
''My expectation is the tax collector will exercise discretion once the vehicle is towed,'' he said. ''Because if someone is reliant on their vehicle to go to work, it doesn't make sense for us to create an impossible situation.''
Early results for the BootFinder, which costs $25,000, have been positive. Michael B. Longhi, the deputy treasurer for compliance in Arlington County, Va., whose agency in April became the first to use it, said it had discovered $1,000 an hour in delinquent car taxes and motor vehicle fines and averaged at least one ''hit'' every 15 minutes.
C.J. Cuticello, New Haven's tax collector, who first made the city aware of the device after seeing an advertisement in a trade magazine, said he found $10,000 in delinquent car taxes during the first four hours he used it. And just the presence of the BootFinder has made a difference in New Haven.
Mr. Cuticello said on the morning an article about it appeared on the front page of The New Haven Register, his office collected $50,000 in car taxes alone in the first three hours it was open, compared with the $8,000 in all kinds of taxes it usually collects on a normal day.
According to Derek Slap, a spokesman for Mr. DeStefano, the State Police Auto Theft Task recently tested the device for two hours and found 11 stolen license plates and a stolen car, resulting in two arrests. Some said they believed, however, that the BootFinder bears watching.
The device can be used on a car parked on private property as long as it is in public view, Mr. Cuticello said. He also said the vehicle can be towed off private property.
Theresa Younger, executive director of the Connecticut Civil Liberties Union, said she had not received any complaints about it and had not yet determined if it violated any civil liberties. However, she did have concerns.
''Will at some point they decide to expand the data base and the use of this program to include things like library books that are overdue, or other kinds of taxes that are overdue?'' she asked. ''And is this some kind of situation where someone who hasn't paid their taxes because they don't have the money walks out of work and finds their car gone and can't go pick up their child?''
But Andrew Bucholz, 37, a former Alexandria, Va., police officer who developed the BootFinder and is now the president of G2Tactics, which makes it, said it was less of a threat to civil liberties than some of the procedures being used.
''Right now, it's up to police officers to type in the plate into a computer data base that provides all kinds of information,'' he said. ''So they look at whose driving a car and what part of town they're in. And that's where racial profiling can come in. With our machine, it's just a license plate against a particular data base. If it doesn't register as a hit, than nothing is going to pop up.'' , prince mongo's brother
