It's certainly not a secret – finding a parking spot in New York City is exceptionally difficult. In the city’s very strict no park zones, not even government issued vehicles are exempt from getting hauled away by a tow truck.

It's certainly not a secret – finding a parking spot in New York City is exceptionally difficult. In the city’s very strict no park zones, not even government issued vehicles are exempt from getting hauled away by a tow truck.

For many decades, FBI cars were exempt from tow jobs, but these days, their privileges aren’t so extensive. For the past few years, the Police Department has had hundreds of FBI and other government owned vehicles towed off.

Even the department’s own police vehicles have been hooked up to the back of a truck and pulled out of illegal parking spots. The cause of the increase in tows regarding official vehicles seems to stem from a unit of the Internal Affairs Bureau for the department.

The goal is to enforce specific parking violations against government vehicles to prove nobody is exempt from the rules. In the eyes of the Vehicle Enforcement Unit workers, the car can be towed if it is a “safety hazard violation” including in no-standing zones, bus stops and other no parking areas in Manhattan.

The FBI usually gets out of paying tow fines, however if a vehicle is hauled off, it typically takes about 4 hours of an agent's time to get it back.