Apparently one forgot to get one’s car inspected. Oops.
Okay, with that out of the way:
I work nights. A few nights ago, a police officer pulled into my place of work’s parking lot (it’s a big lot) at about 1:40 in the morning. There were a few cars there, with the majority on one side and mine a distance away.
The officer went directly towards my car without checking any of the others and gave one a ticket for not having an inspection.
Now, call me crazy, but I find it hard to believe that a cop, at 1:40 in the A.M., goes into parking lots with six cars in them to do random inspection sticker checks.
And since he also ignored the other cars in the lot, I am led to believe that he may have specifically targeted my car, somehow knowing it was there and uninspected.
If that is the case, how did he know it was there? Did he have some secret way of knowing my schedule? Do they have some GPS device that leads them directly to cars? Or was it really just a random check and, unfortunately, I got busted? (If it is the last option, why didn’t he check any of the other cars?)
I would guess he checked all of the cars and just found yours to not be in compliance.
The fact that it was out on its own would raise suspiscion; he may have been checking to see if it had been stolen and dropped off there.
Im not privy to the law there, but the fact that it was on a private lot would irk me a bit with the ticket. I can see driving on the road without inspection to be a ticketable offense, but a parked car on private property doesn’t warrent a ticket (IMHO). Otherwise, everyone with a car in their driveway or garage would need to get it inspected. How does he know you weren’t leaving it there until you could get it inspected? If I were a more aggressive sort, I might be inclined to fight it.
Watch this video, you’ll be amazed. Cops don’t have to actually stop and look up license plates any more. They have automated license plate recognition systems that let them drive down a street, through a parking lot, or down a highway at full speed and check every passing vehicle. He didn’t have to slow down as he passed the other vehicles, his computer didn’t alarm on any of them until he got to yours. In case you don’t watch the whole video, at the beginning the narrator says his department is looking for stolen cars, later he says other departments are loading in the license plates of cars with expired insurance, cars whose owners are wanted, and so on. They could easily load in the tags of cars that have not gotten a required inspection.
Huh, that video was quite enlightening. I had heard of these systems before, but didn’t know effective they were. At the end of the video, when the system spots a stolen vehicle, I assumed it was immediately adjacent to the patrol car. But when the policeman backs up to check the car, it turns out that it’s parked three rows away and at a pretty sharp angle. :eek:
Is there a color coded inspection decal? Especially here at the end of the year, last year’s sticker probably sticks out like a sore thumb to the cops. No high tech scanner required.
Here in South Korea, the registration for the vehicle doesn’t expire. Yep, the registration is open-ended. What does get you, though, is the every other year vehicle inspection. Starting this year, the inspection sticker is a big QR sticker that must be placed inside the vehicle and visible from outside the front windshield. Along with that is a printed-out odometer reading which must be placed on the dash as cose to the odometer as possible without obscuring any other instrument. The QR code has all the information one would expect a cop to ask for/check for at a traffic stop: vehicle make, model, color, year; registered owner; insurance data, etc.
Now all a copper has to do is walk or drive along a line of parked cars pointing his police-issue traffic control QR reader at the stickers and then hit {send} if the machine alerts. That will transmit all the appropriate information to the automated ticket issuing system and the registered driver will receive a ticket in the mail.
The odometer sticker is an anti-fraud measure, supposedly. My guess is that someone prone to rolling back the odometer will simply not roll it back to a lower reading than that on the sticker.
Maybe I’m missing something here, but I don’t understand the puzzlement. To me, the obvious answer to “how did he know it was there” is that he saw it – it was in plain sight. If the real question is “how did he know it was in violation,” it may be that he was using the technology mentioned above, or it may be that he didn’t know it was in violation. What he did know is that it was out there by itself, far removed from the other cars. Even without a fancy scanner, I imagine that could be suspicious – maybe stolen, maybe a drug deal going on, maybe a makeout session. Whatever it might be, it would not give the appearance of normal business like the other cars clustered in one area. I would expect an attentive cop to notice that and check it out.
Okay. I didn’t read the OP carefully, took the question literally, and thought “Well, duh!” I did miss something.
On digesting the OP, I see that he seemed to assume the cop came after his car with prior intent to bust him for the lapsed inspeciton. From the OP: “…somehow knowing it was there and uninspected…If that is the case, how did he know it was there? Did he have some secret way of knowing my schedule? Do they have some GPS device that leads them directly to cars?” Like the cop got an alert saying “CheeseDonkey’s car missed its inpection – track him down and ticket him.”
I still find it odd that one would make those rather convoluted assumptions and ask “how did he know?” when it seems to me it’s much more plausible that the cop didn’t know and merely followed up on a chance observation. Occam’s Razor and such.
::nit pick::
Since it was a ‘private lot’ (as opposed to ‘at home, in the driveway’), the vehicle had to have been driven there with an expired sticker.
Not sure if that’s even ‘ticketable’. (is ticketable a word?) It may be that the vehicle has to be ‘in operation’ on a public street.
It might be worth your while to consult with an attorney.
I do know that here in Texas, a vehicle parked on the street with an expired sticker can be ticketed, not sure about private property though. (I’ll try to find out and report back.)
One other thing, Houston (not sure about other cities) allows a ten day ‘grace period’, in other words, if you acquire a valid sticker within ten days of receiving a ticket, the charge will be dismissed.
I’m sure that rules vary by jurisdiction, but cops are obviously able to enforce laws in many privately owned parking lots - otherwise, they couldn’t ticket for handicap parking violations.
The closest personal experience I have is here in Western Washington, with a privately owned park and small attached parking lot that was having problems with drug deals. Because it was private property, the police could respond to a specific complaint with or without the Homeowner’s Association’s permission, but they needed permission if they were going to do routine patrols. We filed that permission with the department in a way that made it ongoing until we revoked it. Among other things, the police used this permission to check license plates in the lot and link them to known/suspected drug dealers. I’m certain they would have enforced expired tabs at the same time if that ever came up.
In Massachusetts at least, it wouldn’t matter - any registered car has to have a valid inspection sticker. They can ticket you if you’re moving, parked on the street, parked in a lot, parked in your driveway. If you want to stop inspecting your car, you need to turn in your plates & cancel your registration, at which point obviously you may no longer drive the car on any public way. I wouldn’t be surprised if most states had similar laws.
