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Officials in Philadelphia are reminding residents that it is illegal to obscure your license plate. The warning comes after the police impounded a car with a remote-controlled license plate flipper.
The high-tech flipper allows a driver to switch their licenses plate so they can fool the city's red-light cameras or evade detection by the police. A Houston man was caught in 2019 using one to avoid paying automated tolls.
Captain John Ryan, the commanding officer of the Philadelphia Police Major Crimes Unit, told WPVI that finding a high-tech device meant to hide a license plate is rare but added the officers have seen an uptick in the number of people trying to pass off fake plates as real ones.
"If you drive around, you notice there's paper tags everywhere, and many of them aren't legitimate because they can be copied on a copier or print it off on a computer," he said.
The fake plates can also make an officer's job more difficult and potentially dangerous.
"The car might be involved in a crime," said Bensalem Director of Public Safety Fred Harra, "and they are stopping and don't know who they are stopping. It gives us bad information. So these are more things out there that create for a difficult law-enforcement profession."
In Pennsylvania, drivers can be fined up to $100 if they have an obscured licenses plate.