Yeah, I’ll have to concede the possibility, since the OP works nights.
I guess it’s entirely possible that the OP drove to work on the last day the sticker was valid,
and it expired at midnight,
and the cop drove thru the lot after midnight. :rolleyes:
Does*** that ***work for you? 
No, it doesn’t. You are assuming too much.
The fact that a car is sitting in a parking lot does not mean it was driven that day. It doesn’t even mean it was driven that month. Plus, a car that is off by its lonesome away from all the other cars in the lot is more likely to have been sitting there for a couple days.
Sometimes a car breaks down, so the owners push it into a nearby parking lot. They get a ride home and return the the vehicle when they can afford to fix it. Sometimes that means the same day. Other times that could mean days or months.
And it might blow your mind, but sometimes employees will all drive to work and then take company-hired transportation to the airport. Then they will go off to conduct company business in some other city. The whole time they are away on business, their cars are sitting in the lot.
Why do you think that the mere presence of a car in a parking lot means somebody drove that car recently? The fact that it was night time when that car was in the lot makes it even more likely that it’s been sitting.
While that could be true, the car was rather far removed from any road. Here’s a highly detailed depiction of the scenario, using Google Maps:
http://i44.tinypic.com/kq3gz.jpg
And another one:
Police generally go for the oddly parked vehicle first. Once they find a mark, they sometimes let the rest go. You were going to get caught anyway unless some other loaner was lurking out there in the lot.
The private lot citing would irk me too, but that would be near impossible to argue in court. The officer will simply say he spotted a suspicious vehicle enter the lot. End of your argument. Your state may well have an law that covers all vehicles period.
In your OP you stated the LEO … “went directly towards my car without checking any of the others”… . “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.”
I did a little bit of ‘googleing’ on the ‘license plate scanner’ that was mentioned upthread, one of the sites gave the specs for their camera system.
The stated range was “up to three lanes over”, with a ‘speed limit’ of “up to 100mph”. Which implies that the LEO was able to scan every car in the lot and yours was the only one that ‘hit’ as a violator. :eek:
Maybe it’s just a case of “BIG BROTHER” was ‘watching’? 
Except the cop has likely been past that parking lot multiple times and would remember seeing the same car in the same spot for multiple days.
Well, you can present all those arguments in court, while fighting the ticket. And watch the Judge laugh at you.
Unless you have some proff to back up one of them. Which is obviously not true in this case, as the OP explained that he works nighhts, and had indeed driven the car to work that night.
I don’t think this was touched on, but my other scenario thought is that the police regularly patrol that lot, and this officer was already familiar with the cars in the lot. Maybe he had already noted on a different day that “hey, this plate will expire soon,” and when he patrolled the lot again and recognized the car, he checked for the expiry right away. Night patrols can be long and boring, he probably recognizes certain cars often in certain lots, especially if they’re a little different - like parked away from the others regularly.
While the random scan scenario seems most likely, there is another possibility.
The state computers have records on the registration of your car, and the date that you should have done a new inspection. And those records include your home address, and a description of your car (make, model, color). So it would be technically easy for them to pull a list of cars with delinquent inspections, address where they are likely to be found, and the car description, and pass such a list on to police patrols in the neighborhood, to look for when they are not busy. (But I don’t know how they would get your work address, though.)
Our local police have done this on some occasions; not a random list of delinquents, but specific criminals (drug dealers, gang leaders, etc.) that they are after. Generate a list of vehicles owned by these people that have expired license tabs (such criminals tend not to bother about license renewals and so forth), the address & the car description. Then the patrol cars in the area watch for those vehicles, or specifically go to the home address looking for them.
If they can catch one being driven without valid plates, they will then stop it. Then they can search the car looking for contraband. They can check for valid insurance on the vehicle. They can search the driver & passengers looking for weapons, drugs, or outstanding warrants. If the driver is on probation, this might be a violation of probation conditions, which could send him back to prison. From their experience, any of these illegal situations are pretty common with such people, so the police have good odds of getting them off the street.
So our police find such targeted search for ‘expired license tabs’ to be a worthwhile investment of police time.
The scanning software may have been used, but I doubt it. The key two issues are it was late at night and the car was apart from the others in the lot. Those two things equals suspicion. No rocket science or conspiracy theories needed.
As far as the ‘uninspected but on private property’ argument goes, well, if it was *residential *private property I’d agree. I live in NY State so I’m sure the real law says otherwise, but as far as I’m concerned a vehicle that is in your driveway (i.e. on your property, not in front of your house on the street) is not required to always be inspected, same as it isn’t required to be insured or registered. Again IMO those things all only involve a car being driven.
But your car being uninspected at work, that I’m not buying. Like others said if you tried to run a thought experiment, I drove it there inspected and it expired overnight but I haven’t taken it home yet etc., to a judge he’d just laugh at you. And rightfully so. A shopping mall parking lot is private property, but would anyone think it not right for a cop to ticket an uninspected car parked there?
What the hell does any of that have to do with the simple fact that the mere presence of a vehicle in a parking lot with expired tags does not mean it the vehcile was ever driven with expired tags.
I did not say this is what happened in this case. I was not responding to this case. I was responding to JBDivmstr statement that "::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. "
Likely? Perhaps. But again, the statements was “had”. “Had to” and “may have” are two different things. What is so hard for you people to understand about that?
Would laugh at me? Really? So if I went to court to fight my ticket, and explained to the judge that I left my car in the employee parking lot for a month while I was away on vacation, so I never drove it on a public street while it was expired, he would just laugh at me? Do you really believe that?
Leaving an uninspected car in a private lot that’s semi-open to the public? Yes, a judge might not actually laugh at you, but he’s not going to find that an even remotely plausible excuse for you to not get a ticket. It’s private property, but it’s not your private property. It’s closer to it being parked on a city street than it is to being parked in your yard.
The police where I live are quick to ticket cars parked on the wrong side of the street, because even though they aren’t moving they still had to have been driven illegally at some time. Perhaps the same applies proactively. Unless you planned to have your car towed to the inspection center, you’d have to drive it illegally without a sticker even to go directly there. Thus you get a ticket in front of the offense rather than after. You didn’t ask but if I were you I’d just call the court clerk and ask how best to proceed. Most likely if you’ve gotten the car inspected before the court date you can just pay costs of around $25 or so and be done with it.
Did the driver have non-expired license plates on the vehicle? From the OP we can assume that yes he did.
If we assume the answer is YES to the tag question, then we can assume the OP’s state likely has some law to the effect of “licensed vehicles are required to have (a) valid liability insurance, and (b) valid safety inspection.”
I know all three sates I have lived in have some version of this. If that applies here, then it doesn’t matter whether the vehicle is on a public street, private lot, or hidden away in a garage, it is still in violation if the inspection has expired.
The cop drove through the lot, the scanner pinged, you got a ticket. Happy You!
Another obvious answer that no one has mentioned (or that I missed) is that someone ratted you our where you work. There are always lots of good little Nazis who think they are performing a public service by informing on people. If not one of those then it could be someone who dislikes you etc… Never ascribe to police competence what can be explained the malevolence of your fellow employees or customers.
No, in New York state, the key factor is if the car is plated. If you have license plates on a vehicle, then that vehicle has to be insured and have an up to date inspection decal on the windshield. It being on private property is irrelevant.
Yeah, because when you cancel the registration you’re supposed to surrender the plates at the same time. Many people wind up with unregistered plates by simply letting the reg expire and not turning in the plates. This was years ago but my brother & I used to be backyard mechanics and often had unregistered, plateless cars in the yard. Of course our house was zoned residential and they said that more than, I think two or three unregistered cars on your property constitutes running a junk yard! We just ignored them, cleaned up the yard (put a fence up I think!) and they went away.
All of this is just about money, especially here in NYS. The state doesn’t give a shit if your car is ‘safe’ or not, they just want the revenue that inspections and registrations generate. Same goes for uninspected tickets, it’s not about keeping the public safe from uninspected cars, it’s making money from tickets…
I don’t see this.
In most states that I know of that have inspections, the money goes to the mechanic that does the inspections (plus money for any fixes that are needed). The state doesn’t get any part of that money. Is it different in NY?
The inspection fee is set by the state and they do get a cut. NY loves to license and register any and everything they can make money on whether it has any real practical value or not. A while back the, I think, Mario Cuomo administration filled a budget shortfall by increasing the car registration term from one to two years. All this did was provide that one year with more money, offset of course by having the following year be short that money. Brilliant.