Rare Farmington Hills Snow Emergency Leads to Tags, Not Tows

Farmington Hills Police went a little easy on residents during a rare snow emergency called Sunday at 8 p.m. 

Police Operations Commander Mike Ciaramitaro said he believes this was the first time in "a couple of decades" that the city has declared a snow emergency. 

"We chose to tag cars in our city first," he said. "In other cases, we simply ran the license plate and knocked on doors ... We wanted to give people time to deal with it." 

A police service aide will be checking on tagged vehicles and try to reach the owners, before a tow truck is called to take them off the street, he added. 

Over the course of the storm, police responded to 10 accidents, none of them serious, Ciaramitaro said. 

"We just weren't seeing a large amount of traffic," he said. "It's in the days that follow, when everyone is feeling comfortable going out, that things start to kick up a little bit."