Yeah, this one is well-known here in Chicago. That’s why we park in our garages (should be have one) if we need to bide our time in getting our sticker.
Technically, aren’t they touching state property, not your car?
No. But even if that were the case no different than someone justifying screwing around with your mailbox and claiming it wasn’t really your property.
Vigilantes have no authority to touch a license plate on someone else’s vehicle. They need to follow the law, better yet, they need to get a life.
One of my relatives worked for an insurance agent back in the day… If he happened to notice the sticker on the plate was expired (wrong colour), he’d often roll down his window and tell the driver. It was interesting how many people had expired tags, probably 50-50 whether they forgot the tag or didn’t renew.
Possibly - but who’s going to complain? “But officer, I had an illegally obscured license plate and he unobscured it?” i would think the good Samaritan excuse would work, they were just helping the person avoid a ticket. If I fixed someone’s flat, used my portable pump to give them more air, what is someone going to charge me with? Since the article mentioned a lot of the bad licenses were NYPD and the article did not mentioned anybody in the fixer brotherhood had been charged, I would suggest it was not something that charges would be filed over. Fisticuffs, maybe.
Isn’t this all done digitally by now? We haven’t had tax discs (UK equivalent) on our cars for a number of years - it’s all done online, it gets updated annually/paid automatically, you get emailed about it, and Police can check if you’re taxed and insured from running a check on you number plate (in fact anyone can by looking up a car reg online). You have to try hard to forget to renew.
Where I am the issue about lack of current paid up registration is all about the 3rd party insurance. Historically such insurance has been a problem to get insurance companies interested in selling it - with various legal frameworks to get it to happen. Renewal has always been coincident with re-registration.
The thing that really gets difficult is accidents when there is no 3rd party insurance. So the fines for driving without such insurance are an order of magnitude worse than driving with an expired driver’s licence.
The whole sovereign citizen thing seems to break down in the face of such basics as maintaining appropriate insurance. I would guess they tend to actually maintain such things. Being on the sharp end of an auto accident injury damages claim is not something that ranting about gold edged flags is going to help with.
We used to have registration stickers that were an annual chore to remove and replace. They vanished a decade odd ago. Automatic checking seems to occur everywhere. One would be foolish to deliberately drive without current registration.
Depends on the state. Many still issue the stickers even though what’s in system is more important than a little piece of plastic. To me it’s something that is no longer useful but it’s one of those “we’ve always done it this way” kind of things.
As I mentioned upthread my state started then stopped doing it. They first started giving out stickers in 1999 and stopped in 2005. I wasn’t part of the discussion but I’m assuming they realized it was an expense without benefit.
Depends on the jurisdiction. Tampering with a Vehicle, Vehicular Trespass, Vandalism, Malicious Mischief, Criminal Trespass, Disorderly Conduct (a one size fits all charge in my state), Being a Buttinski on a Sunny Day. In some places vehicles are covered under Castle Doctrine laws and you could get your teeth kicked in…or worse!
Being a Good Samaritan does not give someone the right or privilege to mess with someone else’s car. Even if there is a violation of law or a maintenance issue.. it’s not their job to deal with it.
Here in Illinois, they still issue a sticker to put on the plate with every year’s renewal.
Of course, which is why they are called “vigilantes”. It’s explicit that they’re outside the law on this.
In this podcast interviewing one of these vigilantes, the guerilla de-defacer even called his campaign “Criminal Mischief”. He has no illusions about the legality of his activity, but appears to regard it as civil disobedience for the sake of fighting a greater corruption.
You know, I should have posted this… soneplace else rather than perpetuate a hijack. Sorry.
Same here. Then idiots put them all over the plate obscuring it.
But it’s not anyones job but mine to deal with it. Vigilantes be damned.
OK. I see a car with a disfigured license plate, you are driving by, I flag you down to report it. Are you going to issue a citation? Or are you too busy for that and will tell me to call someone else? In many cases these people you are condemning have tried to have the situation remedied and are being ignored.
In an earlier post you mentioned putting a note under someone’s wiper as being wrong. I had a situation where a weekly tenant at a neighboring property parked partially on my lawn. Are you saying that I shouldn’t have put the polite note under the wiper (which I did, the person apologized and moved the car, all good) because that is tampering with a vehicle but I should have just called the tow truck? I should be an asshole instead of a Buttinski?
You’re taking this to the extreme.
If I’m busy or on my way to an assignment it doesn’t become your responsibility to deal with something.
And putting a note under a neighbors windshield wiper one time is not the same as businesses that paper parking lots with fliers on every car they see, which is what I was talking about. The fliers end up all over the place and can damage the wiper if it’s turned on before the flier is removed. Your post is apples vs oranges.
The bit about “many NYPD” meant their private cars. Not really necessary to obscure a patrol car, they usually also have identifying numbers on them and aren’t going to get tickets. ( “Car 54 where are you?”)
Some do but you’ll often hear ‘I don’t need insurance because I have a Personal Assurity Bond officer.’
Once you’ve bought into the idea that the courts don’t have aurhority over you, why would anyone maintain liability insurance?
Of course sovcits have no liability insurance.
When we had them the registration came with clear instructions including a diagram showing to put the sticker in the upper right corner of the plate. The next year you had the choice of peeling off the sticker and replacing it or just putting the new one on top. Way too many people put the next one in the upper left. Then the next year on the bottom left. Then the lower right. Presumably ad infinitum if they didn’t stop sending them out.
There isn’t a designated spot for the sticker? We have one in the upper right corner. My old plates even had an indentation there to make it obvious, but the new ones don’t. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone try to put a sticker anywhere else…maybe the top left corner, but certainly not over the numbers or anything.
In Wisconsin, where @pkbites is located, yes, there is: lower right hand corner of the rear plate.
That doesn’t mean that everyone chooses to put it there, however. I’ve seen plates, in both Wisconsin and Illinois, where the owner got very creative about where they put sticker after sticker on their plate.
Huh. I’ll have to pay more attention. I was looking at plate stickers yesterday for awhile because, well, I sometimes fixate on random things (and it was most likely prompted by reading this thread), and I didn’t notice anything oddly placed. Like I said, though, I may have seen one on the top left, but that’s as weird as it got. Now I’ll be fixating on stickers even more. Thanks. 
(I can pretty much guarantee I’ve never seen one over the actual plate numbers.)