Push to stop booting battles leading to violent confrontations

ATLANTA, Ga. — Nobody wants to walk out and find a boot on their car, but some Atlanta drivers are complaining about something worse – aggressive booters turning violent.

Channel 2 Consumer Investigator Justin Gray learned some of these booters carry guns and some of these situations become volatile.

[DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks]

Both sides -- drivers and booting companies – said these disputes are getting more confrontational.

“You gonna hit me?” asked Niya, who was afraid to share her full name and recorded cell phone video of her encounter with a booter in downtown Atlanta.

He hit her cell phone and said, “Listen.”

“You gonna hit me?” asked Niya again.

“Get that sh@! out of my face,” said the booter.

TRENDING STORIES:

• 15-year-old dies days after church van, SUV crash in north Georgia
• Police pull GA couple over for tag violation. What they had in the car got them arrested
• Man tells GA massage parlor employees he’s a cop. Then, he steals their money, takes off

“Amber! Amber!” yelled Niya calling to her friend late at night in the parking garage.

That cell phone video shows the booter had a gun visible and the interaction was tense.

“Tell me what time it is,” said Niya on the video.

The booter pushed her cell phone and said, “Hey, look. I’m telling you. I’m telling you. Put that sh@! in my face again.”

“I was alone, and I just I didn’t know which way the interaction would go,” said Niya.

But the booting company, Advanced Booting Services, alleged it was Niya who started this and sent a statement:

“The altercation began when the woman knocked my operator off his feet by running into him while attempting to boot her car. When a boot is applied, the operator is in a very vulnerable position. He is crouched down and often on one knee while attaching the boot. That was the first assault by the woman videoing the altercation. She pushed him three additional times while she was filming the incident. Her video is a shortened version of the attack on my operator. At the end of the video, my operator is seen swatting her hand away that held the phone. He believed she would hit him with the phone and acted instinctively to protect himself. She also claims that she felt threatened. If that were true, why would she continue to follow him instead of moving away?

[SIGN UP: WSB-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter]

The aggressive behavior of people has escalated since the pandemic. The sense of entitlement that you can do or say whatever you like without the fear of legal repercussions has been very evident and echoed by our friends in law enforcement. "

Either way you look at it, it was a potentially dangerous confrontation.

Attorney Robert Friedman has handled dozens of booting cases and blames that risk on the business model.

“The only way that these people, these booters get paid is if they attach a boot to your car and collect money,” said Friedman.

“He ran over my leg all the way up to this point,” said Troy Smith showing where the car hit him.

Smith hired Friedman after he said a booter backed over him in his own apartment building garage after Smith complained about being booted.

“While I was on the phone, he backed into me, and proceeded to drive over my leg and then drive off like nothing happened.

It’s another case where the booting company alleges a very different story.

Star Parking sent us a statement that reads in part:

“His report is false. He was the aggressor in the situation and purposely threw himself on the vehicle and tried to put his leg underneath the technicians car while the technician was driving away. He called the police and tried to file a false report. All this was explained to the Police and the technician was cleared of any wrong doing. We also had eye witnesses to the situation as well as footage from the incident… The claims are 100% false.”

The Atlanta Police officer who responded wrote in the incident report that they essentially believed the booting company, labeling this a “miscellaneous non-crime.”

Smith intends to follow up in a civil court with a lawsuit next week.

“Oh, he saw me there. He saw me there because, I, I, I screamed and told him to stop,” said Smith.

In the past two years there have been proposals to reign in booters at the state capitol.

In 2023, lawmakers introduced legislation to ban booting entirely.

This year, the current proposed bill would outlaw the monitoring of parking lots by booters and kickback fees from booting companies to landlords.

“The big change is that a property owner would now have to make the phone call to bring the booter out,” said State Senator Josh McLaurin.

In an email from a landlord to a booting company that McLaurin presented in a hearing, an Atlanta landlord wrote to his booting company to complain about a drop in booting revenue writing “I have just come to count on this booting revenue to pay our lot leases.”

“It seems like a modern form of piracy. They go around, they attach boots to cars, and you know there’s nothing that you can do about it,” said Friedman.

But booting companies countered in testimony at the state capitol that onsite booters are the only reasonable way to protect against illegal parkers.

“If we have to go down the other path we are just going to tow and that’s going to be a lot worse to the consumer than a boot,” warned Jack Hanning from InterPark at the hearing.

Niya said she got to her car before it was booted and that’s what started all this.

“He was like no, you can pay me $40 not to boot your car… I felt he was trying to intimidate me and bully me into paying the money because he was already there,” said Niya.

A representative with Advanced Booting Services wrote, “The car was never booted. She was not charged. Another lie of hers.”

Consumer investigator Justin Gray asked the Advanced Booting Services representative why if his booter felt threatened or attacked he didn’t call police, since he’s the professional.

He said it was all very quick.

It’s clear regardless of how any of these incidents start that they become very tense and potentially dangerous for everyone involved.

Lawmakers said that’s why they will be pushing again next session for those changes to the law.

Little Five Points business owners upset over plans to change last free parking lot to pay lot

©2024 Cox Media Group