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Q&A
Challenges in enforcing proper vehicle registration
1:50:12
·
102 sec
Council Member Salaam asks about obstacles the NYPD faces in enforcing laws requiring proper vehicle registration. Josh Levin, Director of Legislative Affairs for NYPD, outlines several challenges:
- Difficulty in addressing obscured or defaced license plates
- The need to prove intent when plates are covered, even if inadvertently
- Exploitation of legal loopholes by some drivers to avoid detection
Levin also discusses potential solutions and ongoing efforts:
- Proposal to allow writing tickets to the VIN number instead of the license plate
- Collaboration with partners like MTA and Port Authority to interdict vehicles with improper registration
- Use of technology to enhance enforcement efforts
The NYPD's multi-agency approach has led to significant recoveries of unpaid tolls and fines from vehicles with improper registration.
Yusef Salaam
1:50:12
What obstacles exist for NYPD and its efforts to enforce laws requiring physical vehicles to have proper license plates and registrations?
Olufunmilola "Lola" Obe
1:50:25
The obstacles
Josh Levin
1:50:27
I'm Could you you you give both of us the question one more time?
Yusef Salaam
1:50:31
Sure.
1:50:32
What obstacles exist for NYPD in its efforts to enforce laws requiring vehicles to have proper license plates and registrations?
Josh Levin
1:50:44
Well, I think there's a bunch of different factors.
1:50:47
Even some of the stuff like films, somebody obscuring a plate, somebody defacing a plate.
1:50:52
And I think if we were able to write to the VIN number, that's gonna remove a lot of these concerns.
1:50:57
You know, 17060 of the of the penal law is knowingly covering, altering, or defacing a VIN number.
1:51:05
And so, I mean, yes, that means if you take your mail and you throw it in the top of the vehicle, right, and it covers up the VIN technically, you have not committed that.
1:51:17
You knowingly did it, but you didn't mean to cover the VIN.
1:51:20
Right?
1:51:21
But people are exploiting that sometimes.
1:51:24
And they know that you have to be able to prove intent.
1:51:26
So they'll just throw the mail up there, now we can't read the VIN number at all.
1:51:29
So there's a lot of different things that we see that go into account for this.
1:51:33
But as you know, we're leveraging technology.
1:51:35
We're working with all of our partners, with the MTA and the Port Authority to interdict these vehicles.
1:51:40
We've recovered over, I think, $48,000,000 in unpaid tolls or fines last year alone from ghost plates and people driving into the city.
1:51:48
It's a large process.
1:51:49
It takes a lot of different organizations to get it to where it needs to be, but we're doing that.