May. 18, 2023 By Elijah Hamilton
Cars with fake license plates were a major topic of discussion during the May 16 104th Precinct Community Council meeting held at Sacred Heart Catholic Church, located at 83-17 78th Ave. in Glendale.
One resident claimed that many residents had cars with plates from different states parking in her driveway.
“Their plates are registered in Pennsylvania, Virginia, California and Wisconsin and all these other places not registered,” the resident said. “That means they’re not paying registration fees or insurance and not paying tolls and parking tickets, all these other things.”
The 104th Precinct Deputy Commanding Officer Kevin Coleman made it clear that several tow operations have been performed, specifically targeting cars with fake license plates.
“This is something we’ve started just this month and want to be doing this at least a couple of times alone is specific towing and operations to target fraudulent license plates parked on the street,” Coleman said.
Coleman revealed that New York City residents are going to other states to get and sell license plates.
“People are going to other states where it’s straightforward to set up a phony business — in Georgia, in New Jersey — and they’ll set up a business and sell charge people $100 a plate or something like this. Meanwhile, they live in New York, and they sell thousands of these things,” Coleman said
Coleman said the tow operations started last year to get cars off the streets.
“Last year, we put a system in place in which every month, we are ensuring that we are towing multiple vehicles,” Commander Coleman said. “What we have been doing is we are creating a list of the cars and we are towing several times a month.”
So far this year, there have been over 200 cars towed within the confines of the 104th Precinct, with the plan to continue towing more vehicles.
The 104th Precinct covers Glendale, Maspeth, Middle Village and Glendale.