Adams County Vehicle Impound Guide

Adams County and its municipalities — Brighton, Commerce City, Westminster, Arvada — all pull from a shared rotation list of private towing contractors rather than running a single central lot, which means the destination of a seized vehicle is essentially random, assigned at the moment of arrest rather than fixed by geography. Connolly's Towing handles most tows out of Arvada and the western part of the county; Western Towing and Wiggins Junction Towing operate elsewhere in the rotation. A defendant released from the detention facility in Brighton can easily find their car sitting at a lot in Arvada or Commerce City instead — miles from where they're standing, often without a license to drive there even if they had a car.

The base tow rate runs around $100 to $180 an hour, and that climbs fast if the recovery is complicated — an accident scene or an awkwardly positioned vehicle can push the time well past the one-hour minimum. Storage then takes over at roughly $47.12 a day for standard vehicles, charged the moment the car arrives and continuing every 24 hours regardless of when anyone actually notices. A separate After-Hours Release Fee of about $103.70 kicks in for anyone trying to retrieve a vehicle outside the tow company's normal business hours — and since DUI arrests cluster on Friday and Saturday nights while jail releases often happen well outside a 9-to-5 window, defendants frequently face a direct choice between paying that fee immediately or waiting until Monday and racking up more storage instead. If the vehicle sits for more than 2 to 3 days, a statutory notification fee of $75 to $150 gets added automatically, triggered purely by the calendar regardless of whether the owner already knows exactly where their car is.

Connolly's Towing posts its release hours as 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. weekdays and 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturdays, closed Sundays and holidays, "no exceptions." A vehicle towed late Friday night and a defendant bonded out Sunday morning both run into the same locked gate — nothing happens until Monday, which guarantees three full days of storage (Saturday, Sunday, Monday) plus whatever administrative fees apply, adding roughly $150 to $200 purely because of when the office happens to be closed.

Documentation creates its own trap. Release requires a valid driver's license or ID plus proof of ownership — but the arresting officer typically confiscated the physical license as part of the Express Consent process, and if the registration is sitting in the glove box of the very car that's impounded, there's no clean way to produce it. Colorado law requires tow operators to accept credit cards, but some, Western Towing among them according to consumer complaints, have reportedly leaned on bureaucratic friction that effectively favors cash payment.

For the most serious cases — vehicular assault, felony DUI, or anything involving evidence of another crime — the vehicle can be moved under a Police Hold or Evidence Hold instead of a standard impound, controlled by the Sheriff's Office or the relevant municipal evidence unit rather than the tow company. Getting that hold lifted means contacting the specific evidence unit directly, often leaving a voicemail and waiting days for a callback, and once it's finally lifted the vehicle may move to a private lot where fees start accruing again immediately, leaving only a tight window to actually retrieve it.