Cisco Snopes says no.
Duh, haven’t you ever seen Gone in 60 Seconds? They couldn’t steal the cars, because Mercedes used laser cut keys, so they had the guy at the dealership order the special keys. Gosh, don’t you watch any movies? Hehe, j/k!
In at least the case of my SO’s car, by towing it, they ruined the transmission.
Sounds like a non-destructive variant of how bears open [del]snack containers[/del] cars with food in them at Yosemite. Car doors are surprisingly bendable, and the bears just hook their claws on the top of the door and pull.
Unlike the BP cuff thingy, the bears just keep pulling until they’ve bent the door down enough to crawl in, giving drivers a very expensive lesson if they ignored all the signs that warn not to leave food in cars.
Huh, I thought I’d read every article at Snopes already. Guess not.
I wonder why they quit slim jimming cars, though? When I was a teenager I left my keys in my car and didn’t lock it at home. When I was at work/school/running errands, etc, I would lock it, but relatively often I would also leave my keys in it. It was never a problem to flag down a passing cop and they’d gladly take 30 seconds to slim jim it and remind me to have a nice day. I know they will not do this anymore.
Maybe instead of being afraid of flying slim jims, they’re afraid of liability in case they break something?
Just because nobody has been hurt by airbags in this fashion does not preclude people from believing it and making policy on that belief.
Most police departments in my area won’t slim jim a car for people anymore. It opens them up to liability issues. ‘The officer scraped my window when she/he opened my car for me’ etc.
The fire departments will open cars if they are left running or a kid is in the car. They assume no risk in doing so. They are rectifying an immediate safety issue. They could just decide to break your window rather then slim jim it for you.
Before airbags, the UL I heard that Cops wouldn’t slim jim you anymore because some slickster had talked a cop into breaking into a car that was totally not his.
Of course, they would give you the standard spiel about ‘liabilty for damage’ rather than admit one of their own had been that gullible, but they would still leave you locked out. 
Well, this could probably work in theory. I was never ID’ed or asked to prove ownership of the car in any way. In practice, however, if you had the balls to get a cop to aid you in grand theft auto, you’d be more than ballsy enough (and much safer) to just bust the window out.
Sure, but If you get the cop to do it, you’ve got the car, and no busted window. 
Here’s a rollback.
Here’s a tow dolly. I’ve never seen the type of wrecker that lifts the whole car in the U.S.
The type with the crane arm that lifts the whole car up is universal in London for the official squads. They don’t have to worry about alarms or central locking, just nab the whole thing and tell you to pay up if you want it back. If you don’t pay they crush it, many are crushed each month
Picking a lock and getting into the car is a ridiculous way of towing it and I’d be surprised if anybody ever does this. The one time I locked my keys in the car the locksmith took over an hour trying to get in. After realizing that for some reason my car was slim-jim-proof, the inflate-the-bag-and-pop-the-thing method required some serious brow sweat and acrobatics due to the size of my door.
The one time this same car was getting towed (I caught the tow truck though, but not before he moved it far enough to destroy any evidence of me parking legally and properly) they used a dolly.
Umm, I don’t know what kind of car alarms you have on that side of the pond, but here most alarms I’ve seen will go off if you raise the car even a little bit.
Drum God: The answer to your question has now been mentioned a few times since your post. They don’t break the window. They use slim jims.
Cisco: I’ve heard that before, though I had a friend with one that was towed and it wasn’t ruined. Maybe for those they use a dolly tow? Or there’s some trick for getting it into neutral? Or sometimes, as DrDeth says, they destroy the transmission.
Maybe it works better on some cars than others. I bought a set of lockpicks off the internet for the hell of it several years back. Before even getting into my house after retrieving them from my mailbox I gave them a test run on my car and got the door open in about 90 seconds. I had no prior lockpicking experience (and in fact I lost them shortly afterwards and thus have virtually no more experience._
It was a 1996 Saturn SC2.
Soem cars are amazing easy to get into, some are damn hard.
GM products and older Toyotas were absolute cake to break into (anybody recall the mid 80s Toy truck that could be opened with a pencil? :eek: )
European cars in my experience are much harder to break into. I have had locksmiths come into the dealer and ask me for tips. One poor bastard had been working for about 4 hours on a Volvo and was at his wits end.
Getting back to the OP, If it is a rear wheel drive car, tow it from the rear wheels as both park and parking brake work on the rear wheels.
If it is front wheel drive, a dolly or a flatbed tow would work just fine.
If it is all wheel drive it gets dicey. Some AWD units can be destroyed if two wheels are trying to turn and the other two can’t. Others don’t care.
In any event, you can pull one up on a flatbed and tow it that way. The very short distance that the tires would have to slide would not / should not destroy them.
Does anyone know what (if any) liability attaches to the tow-truck driver or company is they do major damage to a car in the process of towing it?
They are responsible for any / all damage. The hard part is proving it.