I filed an online 311 complaint to report an abandoned vehicle. The car, in Queens, had a New Jersey license plate. The plate’s number had been spray painted over but was still readable. The car’s windshield wipers were sticking up like antlers, both side mirrors were gone, the registration sticker expired in 2012, there was a bullet hole in the windshield, etc. Abandoned cars are not always so obvious as this one.

Based on Google Streetview archives this car has been sitting on that spot since at least April, 2012.

I find something conspicuously eerie about abandoned cars. I imagine there is a body in the trunk, that the trunk of the car is an attaché case for contraband, or that the vehicle was used in the perpetuation of a crime and stashed far, far away from where said crime occurred. I cannot find the story now but abandoned vehicles remind me of a piece that I think I saw in the New York Times, describing the delicate process of removing bicycles chained to poles and parking racks near the site of the Twin Towers. The bikes were, a year after the attacks, still soiled with debris from the fallen buildings but left in place under the fabled belief that whoever owned them might still some day come pick them up. I think this false sense of hope and politically bureaucratic forms of cynicism inform the city’s ambivalence toward hauling off abandoned vehicles, which invite vandalism and facilitate the meeting of arrest quotas.

I sent the request around 9:30 p.m., and 311 responded within an hour. That is unusual as they typically respond to these things only during regular business hours. The response was somewhat cryptic. The first email said that the matter had been referred to the NYPD. A subsequent message said that the case had been closed, adding “HANDLED BY PREVIOUS TOUR”. I cannot find a clear interpretation for what “HANDLED BY PREVIOUS TOUR” means but I’ll assume it’s routine policespeak.

The prompt response from 311 made it sound like the car had been hauled off that very night. That is not what happened, and I do not think immediate action would be a reasonable expectation.

I went by the location the next day and the car was still there. Went back the next day, still there. I made checking in on it part of my daily constitutional, idly looking forward to whatever tiny bit of satisfaction I could glean from having this particular 311 complaint addressed.

The car is located on one of the relatively rare streets that has no alternate side of the street parking rules. This makes the street a logical place for something like this to wash up. People park their cars there for weeks, and the quantity of shattered windshield glass on the curb is a testament to that, as parking somewhere for that long generally invites robbery.

Three days after sending the 311 request I passed by the location again. That’s when things got weird. The hood of the car was raised. One guy with a tool chest looked like he was working on the car’s engine while another guy was rummaging through the trunk. One of them looked at me directly, nervously, his facial expression communicating not so much “YOU LOOKIN’ AT ME, BITCH?” as “THIS BETTER NOT BE YOUR CAR, HOLMES, BECAUSE IF IT IS THEN IT AIN’T YOUR DAMN CAR ANY MORE.” They had their tools and gear in a regular unmarked car, meaning that they do not appear to have been from an auto body shop (or 311, for that matter) though lack of identification to that effect is not necessarily meaningful.

I can’t put it any other way except to say that these guys looked really, really sketchy. They cannot have been associated with 311.

The weirdest thing of all was that the New Jersey license had been replaced with a Pennsylvania plate. This license plate has the word “TRUCK” at the bottom. This nondescript car is not a truck (all its branding has been removed but I think it’s a Toyota Corolla).

I checked the nyc.gov 311 web site, where all service requests are posted daily. The exact street address which I supplied in the service request is included on the web site. This surprised me. I would expect the public posting of 311 requests would obscure residential addresses.

It got me thinking that guys like this comb the 311 web site for derelict vehicle complaints and, address in hand, come out to pry the parts for scrap. Why did they change the license plate? Who the hell are they? Was there any connection between this activity and my 311 request? I don’t need to know, and I do not expect to lose sleep over this, but it’s been an intriguing near-encounter with some extremely shady looking individuals.

I may have had good intentions but I think I dipped into something that I want absolutely nothing to do with.

There are at least 2 other abandoned cars on that street. I will not trouble 311 with these. I will let them rot.