The way I read this, the cars arent being repo'ed. They arent being seized for a lack of car payments, they are being held hostage to other debts. I had no idea anyone could steal your car for an unpaid debt. Perhaps in Massachusetts that is legal,but I never heard of it before.
While I was shocked that they could seize your car for unrelated debts, the fact that the Sheriffs office is in business with debt collectors really blew me away. I have never heard of either of these two practices.
You can be sure the state collects a sizeable daily storage fee of the towed car. Then they use that to seize the debtors home, all while raising his property taxes for the common good. This article is just PR spin pretending to be the good guy. More likely they've discovered the guy with a $700 car will never pay their storage fee and they want to maximize their storage space with better paying extortion customers.