Mom says son’s car towed by MPD, keys lost for days

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — A local mother is upset about how she says the Memphis Police Department treated her son after a traffic stop.

David Harris’s mother, Ms. Donna, says it all started on October 11 when Memphis police stopped her son while he was driving his Challenger Scat pack.

“It was two officers’ cars from my understanding. One pulled in front of him so he had to swerve to keep from hitting him and the one behind him pulled him over and said you were swerving,” Ms. Donna said.

According to Donna, officers then searched the car, and detained her son, telling him he had to get a ride because they were going to tow his car.

“He is a very responsible young man,” she said. “He goes to work faithfully. He works hard for what he tries to accomplish in life. He has his degree and he just does what a young man is supposed to do. And if that is what he chooses to drive a nice car then he works for it, he deserves it.”

Harris was ticketed for reckless driving and his car was towed to the Memphis Police Impound lot, where Donna says things got worse.

“My son and I went to Millington to get the keys,” she said. “It was locked and the keys weren’t there.”

📡 See more breaking news, local news and weather from WREG.com for Memphis and the Mid-South .

📧 Sign up for WREG newsletters and have the latest top stories sent right to your inbox.

According to the company that manages the Police impound lot, it is standard procedure to leave the key in the car with the doors unlocked. If a key is found in the parking lot it will go to the supervisor’s desk.

However, that’s not what happened to Harris’ keys.

“Nobody knew where the keys were. He couldn’t pull it up in the system but then all of a sudden he said, ‘Oh, my bad’ he went straight to a drawer and got those keys out and talked about my bad,” Ms. Donna said.

Donna says her son was without his keys for five days.

“If you have the keys for days like that, I’m thinking you were trying to come back and steal that car because what other reason would you, number one, take them inside and they are not supposed to be with employees at all,” she said.

Ms. Donna worries this could be a trend.

“We had to go spend more than $225 to get the car back. To me personally, it was just an unnecessary process,” she said. “They had an internal motive, you didn’t just do all that for nothing.”

WREG has reached out to the Memphis Police Impound Vehicle Storage and Memphis Police for comment are are waiting to hear back.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WREG.com.