I’d say it is always safer to fully load a car on a flatbed and tow it with none of the wheels turning. I never understood why it is allowed to tow someone else’s car with their wheels turning.
Anyway, someone who didn't seem to be a neighbor decided to park a big crusty step van there for a month and a neighbor must have took offence to that and called it in, because two non-flatbed Boston city police tow trucks showed up in the middle of the night to take it away. I became aware of this due to a horrible intermittent screeching sound - I opened my blinds and saw the two tow trucks, facing opposite directions and using one side of each of their hydraulic wheel lifts in tandem on the outer wheels of the step-van to pull the parallel-parked vehicle out perpendicularly into the street. Once it was out in the street they didn't bother to put it in neutral or anything, hooked the front on one of the trucks and drove away with the locked up rear tires just screeching all the way away into the night. Parts of the rubber tracks were left behind for years on that street.
The lesson to all who saw those tracks - Boston don't give no fucks about your street parked vehicle if it is deemed abandoned by the community!
[1] https://www.boston.gov/departments/transportation/abandoned-...