Towing Issues: Vehicle broken into when towed, is this legal?, tow away zone, edged sword

Question
I am from Gainesville, Florida and parked in a "Tow Away Zone for Unauthorized Vehicles" parking lot for a coffee shop. My car is manual transmission so when I parked it I left the gear in neutral and pulled the handbrake up. When I went to pick it up from the towing place I found that the handbrake was down and it was set in fourth gear, thus it was obviously broken into. Is this in anyway legal?

Answer
Gainesville, just changed a bunch of laws regarding towing from private property, and I have not got all of the new ones yet...

But I will say that first of all "ethically" it is wrong to enter a vehicle, to many things can happen then... The "bag of diamonds" can come up missing and the like...

Now on the other hand, this method can make it easier and cheaper to tow the vehicle and reduce the chances of damage happening.  

Kind of a 2 edged sword here on that issue....


But as to legal or not, I really do not know of any law that says you can not enter a vehicle at all, but like I say the rules in the city there have changed recently. I am sure you have followed all the newspaper stories there also about towing issues and the 3 companies who have had their "authority to tow revoked"

Sorry I can not provide a better answer.