What will become of an ordinary drive when it becomes a traffic stop due to a camera somewhere deciding that there is a license plate that matches a “hot list?”
The type of confusion is more easily conceived now that automated license plate readers have become the norm in several locations. These camera systems record plate numbers and in most instances they are accompanied by location, date and time then compare the scan to the databases of plates attached to vehicles of interest. A match may generate an alert in real time and the driver might be requested to clarify on something that he or she did not do.
The most viable target at that point is to bring clarity, quick, serenely and with paper work that is verifiable. A driver can request to know the plate being flagged over then give out registration and insurance as normal. It can be used to also request that the officer validate the information as correct and current as well since an alert is not considered as a sufficient result on its own to make arrest decisions. It is important to remember to maintain the focus on verifiable records, and it can be done by mistakes like incomplete data entry into a database or a flawed reading of a plate.
Once the stop is over, the best point of leverage that the driver has is documentation. The date, time, place of occurrence, the agency involved and any incident or case number should be noted. In case paperwork was given, then it should be stored. In case the driver can take a picture of the plate via the phone and the registration (as safely as possible when parked later), it can be used to demonstrate that the plate is being used on the right vehicle. This is also the occasion to ensure that the plate number and information of the vehicle are identical in all the documents such as registration cards and insurance cards.
A lot of circumstances depend on the identity information that can be checked more easily than one thinks. Vehicle identification number is a standard 17-character code, which is present in not just one location on a car. It is found on the dashboard close to the windshield, the door jamb, or other common places indicated in a VIN location guide and then compared by the driver to the one printed on registration and insurance documents. In case a plate was copied or keyed the fastest method of establishing the actual physical presence of a vehicle is usually the VIN.
To prevent a repeat, a brief follow-up with the local department making the stop is possible. Having the case number at hand, a driver will be able to enquire how to rectify the erroneous association of “stolen plates” and what are the paperwork required to amend the internal systems of the agency. This is particularly significant since license plate reader systems could be based on shared databases and also on so-called “hot lists,” such as the list of stolen plates stored in the systems of the criminal justice accessible nationally. Even in the case that the error has occurred in a different location, e.g. an entry in a previous report, local employees can still determine the source of the record and what to do to clear the source of the record.
It is even convenient to perform a history check on the plate itself when the VIN is inaccessible or when the driver is suspicious of a plate transfer or mismatch of the data is obscuring the record. There are services which enable a search with a valid license plate number and state, and may give several records in case over the years the plate has been transferred to another vehicle. Such a pattern is not a sign of mischief but it may help to explain why the vehicles are on the same plate, and other background information to give when asking to be corrected.
The reality behind this is that the license plate readers are meant to operate at a fast pace and a large scale not at being subtle. In the case of the plate being wrongly flagged, the best reaction is a consistent one: check the VIN, collect the stop information and cooperate with the agency to get the record straight to eliminate the repetition of the flagging notification as the driver continues down the highway.
