An advertising trailer is towed away by police along Vanowen Blvd. in Woodland Hills. The city is cracking down on illegal advertising signs parked along the sides of roads throughout the San Fernando Valley. (David Crane/Staff Photographer)

Officers towed more than a dozen so-called mobile billboards parked in the West San Fernando Valley on Sunday in an unprecedented crackdown against a controversial industry officials are trying to get off city streets.

A cadre of city traffic enforcement officers also cited 32 offending vehicles with signs in a two-day sweep that included warning, fining, and impounding mobile billboard advertising displays.

The New Year ushered in tougher state and city regulations against ever-present mobile billboards advertising goods and services from car alarm systems to wedding services to massages that have annoyed many residents throughout the city.

"They're not only an eyesore, they're unsafe - you can't see around them," Larry Padovich of West Hills said Sunday of the mobile billboards along Vanowen Street near Topanga Canyon Boulevard.

Owners of the impounded mobile billboards may be subject to misdemeanor penalties that range from $250 to $1,000 and/or up to six months in jail.

Local lawmakers say the signs are among the biggest gripes among voters and have been working to get them off the streets.

The new laws cut through legal red tape that has hampered efforts to outlaw mobile billboards in the past. Critics of the advertising trailers say they are a safety hazard and use up valuable parking spaces.

City Councilman Dennis Zine, a leader of the campaign to rid city streets of advertising trailers, will discuss results of the sweep at a news conference this morning.

"These things have been a nuisance for a long time, and we had to wait for state legislation before doing the actual enforcement," Zine said Sunday. "We're going to continue the enforcement and the impounds, and we want to eradicate them from the streets of Los Angeles."

At least one mobile billboard owner is attempting to circumvent the new laws by taking the wheels off his trailers as part of a conversion he says puts them in compliance.

"They are now sleighs - like Santa's - and are not legally mobile billboards," said Bruce Boyer, owner of Lone Star Security, who also removed the axles.

Boyer said that while some of his mobile billboards were among those towed Sunday, authorities had not touched those converted into sleighs.

Zine said those sleighs, because they do not have wheels, fall into a different legal category and that officials are studying those regulations.

"He's playing cat-and-mouse with us," said Zine. "We don't think we need any special legislation, but we'll see. We will do what is legally permissible."

Boyer, who has been fighting City Hall on the issue, said he will be challenging the city's ordinance.

Other mobile billboard owners are either converting or upgrading their sign trailers to vans that are not covered by the law, which targets non-motorized wheeled vehicles with advertising displays, Boyer said.

"Others are awaiting the city's reaction to our 'street-legal' sign-trailers under the likely scenario that the city will impound and hold them regardless of the fact that they are legal," he said.

On Sunday, parking enforcement officers swept down on mobile billboards near the intersection of Vanowen Street and Fallbrook Avenue in West Hills, on Vanowen Street and Canoga Avenue, in Canoga Park, at Wilbur Avenue and Saticoy Street and Saticoy and White Oak Avenue in Reseda, and at Mason Avenue and Roscoe Boulevard in Winnetka and on Variel Street south of Victory Boulevard and on Shoup Avenue north of Ventura Boulevard, in Woodland Hills.

Sgt. Barbara Hartsfield with the city's Department of Transportation traffic enforcement, who was directing the sweep, said the mobile billboards towed on Sunday were just a small number of those that dot many parts of the Valley.

The task force, she said, had originally planned to impound 16 mobile billboards Sunday morning but ran into some snags.

"We didn't have full owner registration information (on some)," Hartsfield said. "We have to have registered owner information on those we're towing. The city is doing this legally with the way the law is written and the way the city attorney has interpreted it.

"We warn them and 24 hours later we return to the location and verify all the information for the warning. And then if it's all intact, we (ticket and) tow."

Officials said residents wishing to report mobile billboards for enforcement action can call the city at (818) 752-5100 or (213) 485-4181.

"It's good that they're impounding these signs," said Chris Knudsen of Chatsworth, who was on Vanowen Street Sunday morning. "It's a great way to start the New Year!"