THE NEW MOB WARS

TO THE LONG and storied history of Philadelphia mob wars, including the 1980 assassination of Angelo Bruno (shown here), the murderous hostilities between the families Merlino and Stanfa, and all the sordid and violent events in between, add a new chapter: the tow-mob wars. The latest warring families: Mystical Complete Auto Service and J & Son's Auto Body.

Both companies showed up at the scene of an accident in Hunting Park this week, wrestling over who would get the towing job. It ended in gunshot, with the Mystical driver shot, allegedly by his rival from J & Son's.

Wednesday, J & Son's lot got torched, destroying 13 cars; minutes later, six shots were fired back at Mystical's lot.

Just like the most horrific mob hits, these hostilities didn't spring up overnight. The two companies were wreck-chasers, tow-truck operators who listen in on police scanners for accidents, and race to the scenes in order to land a tow job that often is part of a kickback to body shops. It's a longstanding racket.

It needs to stop.

Councilman Frank Rizzo thought he stopped the madness two years ago, when he legislated the rotational towing program, which was supposed to have only certain tow- truck operators called by police on a rotational basis to the scenes of accidents. But that program has been little used, in part because wreck-chasers often get to the scene before the police, and have accident victims sign a contract for their services, which makes it too late for another tow operator to get involved. (The tows are lucrative, especially when they're tied to deals made between towers and body shops; the deals, with high towing and storage fees, are rarely designed in the interest of victims.)

The real mob wars in the city eventually were halted by aggressive federal indictments.

This tow-mob war may be short-lived. Tuesday, Councilman Jim Kenney sent a letter to the mayor's office urging Nutter to abandon the rotational towing charade and instead authorize only select tow groups to respond. These companies would be contacted at the same time a police officer is summoned to an accident, instead of relying on police to contact the rotational companies. This doesn't keep wreck-chasers from scanning police radios, however.

A more likely fix is one that public-safety honcho Everett Gillison is suggesting, that will effectively take accident notifications to police off the public airwaves, shutting out the wreck-chasers.

He has already been working with Council to make additional fixes to the city's towing operations. He has also been working on dedicating the city's wireless network to public safety. That got a jump-start with the $2 million purchase of the network, but he says he needs up to $20 million to upgrade the network to make it operational.

This latest nasty outbreak of towing violence might provide the impetus for putting our safety in more technically advanced and secure hands.

Meanwhile, vehicle owners who suffer the hell of retrieving their cars from tow lots after the vehicles are towed from city streets can take some solace when they think about the owners who went to J & Son's to get their cars and found burned-out hulks instead. *