NYPD Highway Patrol making concerted effort to crack down on "phantom cars"
NEW YORK -- The city is cracking down on a growing problem -- cars with illegal and counterfeit license plates.
Police say many have been linked to crimes across the city.
The NYPD recently CBS2's Jenna DeAngelis a behind-the-scenes look at how investigators are tackling this issue.
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She saw images of the alleged getaway cars from separate shootings in Queens and Brooklyn. Police said another car is connected to robberies in the Bronx.
They were three different crimes with one major thing in common: the cars had illegal, fake, paper license plates known by the NYPD as "phantom cars."
DeAngelis joined NYPD Highway Patrol Officer Steven Abrams to learn more about this growing problem in the city.
"The main concern is the violent crimes being committed in New York City right now. These perpetrators are using these vehicles that are undetectable due to these fraudulent plates to commit crimes," Abrams said.
Phantom cars are tough to trace, but Abrams is trained to track them down.
"We're able to look at certain indicators such as like the shape of the plate, the sequence numbers, the state seals," Abrams said.
He gave DeAngelis a closer look by pointing out a parked car in Queens.
"This is a completely bogus license plate. They're tailoring the information on these plates in order to make it look legitimate," Abrams said.
He went on to say the car in question would be towed.
If you get caught with a fraudulent license plate, police say you will get arrested and your car will get taken to an NYPD impound lot.
"In this case, this is a fraudulent temporary Texas plate," Abrams said. "When running this number through our database it actually comes back to no results found, which means this unique sequence number was never issued by the state of Texas."
There are legitimate temporary tags out there. NYPD Deputy Inspector Conor Wynne said paper plates became more prevalent during the pandemic with DMV operations disrupted around the country.
"As we started to come out of the pandemic, those paper plates remained on those vehicles. So what was happening was people were either manipulating the actual document to stretch the expiration date or they were making a completely new fraudulent document," Wynne said.
Wynne said it's also illegal to obscure license plates in any way.
Highway Patrol Officer Michael Fokianos showed DeAngelis a video of a device installed on a car's license plate frame that lowers a black cover over the license plate.
"You can actually see the wiring that's coming from the side of the trunk into the plate mechanism actually there," Highway Patrol Officer Michael Fokianos said.
That plate-blocking mechanism was discovered by Fokianos when he was pulling the driver over for speeding, a move that led to an arrest.
"In a given day, how many of these fraudulent license plates do you usually come across?" DeAngelis asked.
"Approximately five to 10, but there's only one of me and a lot of people out here making fake plates and using them to avoid detection," Abrams said.
Obstructed and temporary plates -- legal or illegal -- can defraud speed cameras and tolls. Police say often times they find these cars are also uninsured and unregistered, which can lead to safety issues on the roads.
"We're ultimately paying the price for other people's illegal activities, which needs to be nipped in the bud," Abrams said.
Officer Abrams has made it his mission to do just that.
