Loud cars (and loud people) still close to top of Elginites’ calls to police

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Michael Smart | Staff Photographer Base speakers in the back seat or trunk owned by young drivers are the typical culprit of loud stereo noise in cars. But according to police, loud noise lawbreakers come in all ages. 6/6/09

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Updated: November 16, 2011 1:59AM

ELGIN — In 2001, a community survey conducted by a polling firm asked residents of the City to Watch what most irritated them.

Elginites’ most common answer wasn’t something they could watch but something they too often could hear: loud, pounding, bass-heavy car stereos.

The city council then voted 4-2, with one member absent, to begin towing any car found emitting loud music, and to make the owner pay what amounts to a stiff fine to get the car back.

Ten years after this “towing and impoundment ordinance” went into effect in August 2001, noise complaints still remain near the top — in terms of numbers — of problems phoned in to police. But it’s possible that loud outdoor parties and non-automotive sound systems are replacing the mobile ones in cars as a source of irritation. And people who raise the decibels with backyard dancing and carousing are much less likely to get anything more than a police officer’s warning that they need to pipe down.

Tale of 1 weekend

In just one recent weekend — Saturday, Aug. 6, and Sunday, Aug. 7 — Elgin 911 dispatchers received 29 complaints that they classified as “loud music,” “loud subjects” or “noise.” Deputy Police Chief Cecil Smith said it is difficult to determine from the paper trail whether each specific complaint was based on a loud car driving past, a loud party going on at a neighbor’s home, or human voices shouting and arguing.

What can be learned from the call sheets is this:

The calls all came from residential neighborhoods — 18 from the city’s east side and 11 from the west side. They came from high-poverty, high-crime areas as well as from cushy new subdivisions. None came from the downtown area.

The complaints were a phenomenon of the night, perhaps showing that people are willing to put up with neighbors’ noise unless they’re trying to sleep. Of the 29 calls, all but six were phoned in between 9 p.m. and 7 a.m. Most came between midnight and 3 a.m.

In several cases, more than one person called — or the same person called multiple times — to complain about the same situation. For example, some kind of noisy Friday night/Saturday morning goings-on in the 100 block of North Gifford Street spurred angry calls at 2:44 a.m., again at 3:37 a.m. and again at 5:05 a.m.

According to police spokeswoman Sue Olafson, none of the 29 calls resulted in a car being towed or a violator being arrested or cited for any offense.

“Twenty-nine complaints is not unusual if it’s a good (weather) weekend,” Smith said. “Generally with a loud party, an officer will go out and talk to the people about turning the music down. We don’t usually make arrests, though in an extreme case the homeowner could be charged with disorderly conduct, a Class C misdemeanor.”

‘$500, please’

But when a driver is found blaring out music from a thumping car stereo, he is much more likely to face some legal trouble.

Even before the towing ordinance was passed a decade ago, anyone caught with a loud car stereo could be fined $75 in Elgin. And police did impose a lot of those fines — 431 tickets for car noise in the year 2000 alone. But with advances in stereo power and portability, the problem was only getting worse, said then-Mayor Ed Schock and City Councilman John Walters as they pushed for the new ordinance.

“We’ve had an ordinance under which tickets have been written and written and written and written and written some more,” Walters said in 2001. “Has it stopped the guy at 2 a.m. driving by my house and ‘boom, boom, boom, boom’?”

“I get complaints about dogs barking on Sunday mornings, but we don’t impound the dog,” responded Councilwoman Marie Yearman, who voted against the towing ordinance.

According to the ordinance, any driver playing music that can be heard 75 feet or more from his vehicle is subject to a traffic stop. After the car is towed, the owner must post a $250 bond (which was increased to $500 by the council in September 2009) to have the car returned, on top of a $175 towing fee plus storage fees imposed by whichever private company did the towing.

The offender then must appear before a city hearing officer in what is called an adjudication hearing in the same council room/courtroom at city hall where the ordinance was enacted. If the citation is found to be justified, the $500 bond is forfeited as an administrative fee. The offender also might still have to pay that $75 fine for the ordinance violation.

In 2007, the council voted to begin similarly towing and impounding cars driven by people charged with driving under the influence or driving without a valid license. The administrative fee for those tows also was raised to $500 in 2009.

Big money

Whether or not the cost of all that may discourage pumping up the volume, it indisputably has been pumping up city revenues. The city has been earning more than $1 million a year from those $500 fees. In just the first two weeks of July this year, 73 cars were towed, although most of those were because of driver’s license violations. In all of last year, 106 vehicles were towed because of loud stereos. From Jan. 1 through Aug. 15 of this year, 49 loud cars were towed.

“Incredibly, some people have been towed multiple times” for loud stereos and assessed the $500 penalty more than once, Police Chief Jeff Swoboda said. “They must be slow learners.”

Arrests and fines for noise at home seem to be much less common but are increasing. City Councilman John Prigge said seven homeowners have been ticketed for violating the city’s noise ordinances in the first eight months of this year, while “we only had one loud-home citation in all of 2010.”

“I’m thinking that maybe people are taking the big speakers out of their cars and putting the speakers in their homes,” Prigge joked.

“We haven’t solved the noise problem, but we’re going at it,” Swoboda said. “All our officers know this is one of our real priorities and that it’s one of our biggest sources of complaints.”

The real key to the loud-auto problem is education, the police chief said — to let people know that if their car’s music is so loud that someone can hear it 75 feet away, they’re in for a steep fine and a lot of inconvenience.