The San Diego Police Department said its seeing an upward trend of “modified license plates.” These include any changes made to the original DMV-issued license plate.
At first glance, the plates appear legitimate. But if you look closely, you can see the real license plate is wrapped by a plastic cover. Police say license plate modification is illegal, and if caught, you could face serious consequences.
SDPD confiscated 34 over the course of one month, according to Officer Anthony Carrasco.
Drivers like Robert Clark don’t really notice the difference.
“It doesn’t bother me one way or another, whether they’re wrapped or unwrapped,” Clark said.
But others like Russell Dunn understand how they could be unsafe.
“I think it’s unsafe because a lot of them just do dark. You’re legally supposed to be able to read them,” Dunn said.
The state of California prohibits the modification of license plates. Assembly Bill 2111 bans alterations or tampering with plates, and Assembly Bill 1085 prohibits the manufacturing of any device designed to hide plates from cameras.
“I’ll try to peel some of this wrap off so that you can see what the original license plate was supposed to look like underneath it,” Carrasco said. “So it looks like they put the month sticker right on top of the wrap, but you can see the white underneath it, and you can see the blue lettering kind start to appear.”
From Carmel Valley to San Ysidro, Carrasco said seeing plates with modifications is becoming more common. He added that most of the time, people buy the modified wrapping online, unaware that they’re breaking the law. While he understands why some people do it, he said it’s not worth the risk getting caught.
“They want to make their license plate look pretty,” he said.
He said you could get a ticket, have your license plate confiscated and your car impounded. If your license plate gets confiscated, Carrasco said you would have to get it replaced at the DMV.
“This license plate is the property of the Department of Motor Vehicles in the state of California, so it’s not an art canvas for you to express your artistic side on,” Carrasco said. “This is the state’s property, and it poses an identification role, so we need to make sure that these license plates are clearly readable.”
Carrasco said the modifications make it difficult for Automated License Plate Readers to capture a license plate number, which makes it harder to track down criminals or even stolen vehicles.
If you do have modified license plates, Carrasco recommends getting rid of them and replacing them with original DMV plates.