Clinton County Vehicle Impound Guide

Bring the registration. Bring the insurance card. Bring the notarized bill of sale. None of it will get your car released in Clinton County if your name isn't the one on the title.

The Clinton County Sheriff's Office runs a title-only release policy with, in their own words, "no exceptions." If the car was arrested while being driven by someone other than the titled owner — a spouse's car, a parent's car, a company vehicle — the titled owner has to physically show up with the original Certificate of Title and their own driver's license. There is no substitute document that works around this. If that person can't appear in person because of distance or illness, Ohio law allows a Durable Power of Attorney — but it has to be the Durable kind specifically; a Health Care Power of Attorney won't be accepted for a vehicle release, and any notarized document with white-out, crossed-out text, or blank fields gets voided on sight, forcing you to start the paperwork over while storage fees keep running.

There's no single impound lot here. Clinton County runs a rotation-wrecker system: whichever private towing contractor is next on the dispatcher's list gets the call, unless the driver specifically asks for one at the time of arrest — something that rarely happens in the chaos of an OVI stop. Known operators working the county include Rusty's Towing Service and Johnny's Auto & Heavy Duty Semi Truck Towing. To find out which one actually has your car, you need to call the arresting agency's non-emergency dispatch line directly and ask.

Paying off the tow bill doesn't automatically get you the keys back, either. If the arresting officer suspects contraband, evidentiary value, or a pending asset forfeiture — common in felony OVIs or cases with multiple prior convictions — they can place an investigative hold on the vehicle. That hold is an absolute lock: the tow yard is legally barred from releasing the car until the specific investigating officer clears it, which means tracking that officer down and petitioning for release yourself or through counsel.

Even retrieving something small — your wallet, your medication, your house keys — out of an impounded vehicle isn't something you can do alone at the lot. You have to go through the investigating officer, who's required to physically accompany you to the vehicle and document exactly what gets removed.

Here's the quieter trap: the Wilmington Police Department has made clear that collecting unpaid towing and storage bills is the tow company's problem, not the city's — but it's handed those private companies a real enforcement tool anyway. An unpaid tow yard can file a hold directly with the WPD Evidence Unit, which locks up the vehicle's disposition through the police department's own system even though the debt itself is private. Settle the bill and get a physical, written release receipt from the tow company before you try to close anything out — verbal confirmation isn't enough.