Nassau County police cracking down on illegal license plates

The Nassau County Police Department is cracking down on motorists driving with illegal, obstructed or defaced license plates.

Operation Safe Streets, a countywide enforcement initiative, began Wednesday and will continue through the end of the year with officers from the Highway, Motor Carrier and Problem-Oriented Police units, according to Nassau County Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder.

Ryder said police are targeting drivers misusing their license plates or with darkly tinted windows that could obscure an officer’s ability to see inside. They're stopping drivers at checkpoints throughout the county, according to the commissioner. Drivers with fake license plates face arrest while those who obscure their plates face fines and citations.

The move comes during the start of the holiday season, when vehicular traffic increases, and as the use of obstructed plates has grown in recent years, according to department statistics.

For example, Ryder said a recent scam involves motorists driving with paper license plates — similar to those issued at car dealerships before a motorist obtains legal plates from the DMV. Ryder said drivers are copying those paper plates, changing the expiration dates and selling them online.

“Until our officers stop that car, we don't know it’s a fake plate,” Ryder said at a news conference in Eisenhower Park. “In the meantime, they’re running red lights. They're going through our [license plate readers] after they’ve committed crimes. And we can’t detect it because it doesn't come back to the right vehicle.”

Law enforcement, he said, is also targeting cars with license plates that are covered or partially obscured.

In 2021, Ryder said, Nassau police made 1,045 arrests for fraudulent license plates, up from 367 one year earlier. Thus far in 2022, there have been about 200 such arrests, according to Nassau police Det. Lt. Richard LeBrun, a department spokesman, who attributed the recent decrease to education and enforcement.

Traffic summonses are on the rise, at more than 123,000 year-to-date, compared to nearly 74,000 in 2021, authorities said.

Law enforcement officials said a valid and visible license plate is critical in determining the identity of the driver they are stopping during a traffic stop.

In the first 10 months of 2022, Nassau police confiscated 84 guns during traffic stops compared to 52 in all of last year, police said.

“Those car stops are vital when it comes to … doing the investigation, asking the right questions when they interview the driver and allowing us to get into that car,” Ryder said.

Robert Sinclair Jr., a AAA Northeast spokesman, said it's critical for law enforcement to view legible license plates when tracking vehicles involved in criminal activities. 

"This crackdown," he said, "goes a long way to making that happen."

By Robert Brodsky

robert.brodsky@newsday.com@BrodskyRobert

Robert Brodsky is a breaking news reporter who has worked at Newsday since 2011. He is a Queens College and American University alum.