Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Dark covers for license plates

See more and more all the time. My understanding is that this is illegal. I would think this would give the police an automatic reason to pull you over.

What is the purpose other than the obvious?

My niece was pulled for this last winter.
Her plate cover wasn't 'dark', just very yellowed with age.
Cop told her to remove it immediately!

They’re illegal in tn. Even clear ones. As I understand it, it makes a lic. plate unreadable to a traffic camera.

If an LEO wants to pull someone over , they don’t need a tinted license plate cover to do it.

I'll bite. What's the "obvious" one ?

Cuz like 5 possibles come to mind.

Agree, just looks suspicious and draws unneeded attention

If you use matte clear coat spray paint to "protect" your license plate from the elements, it makes it more difficult for scanners to read them.

An unfortunate and unforeseen side effect of protecting your license plate from corrosion.

They don't need much of an excuse. A couple years ago I headed to town. It was a very cold day, early morning, and I was driving about 45 or 50 in a 60 to warm up the engine. A couple miles from me, the road goes from 2 lanes to 4. When I got to that point, a cop stopped me. He said that I didn't signal to show which lane I was going into. There weren't any other cars on the road to see my signal anyway. That's a super flimsy reason to stop me. I don't know what he was looking for but he just let me go and said nothing else. I just guessed that he figured that I was going slow to avoid a stop because I was carrying drugs or maybe drinking.

Cops are always looking out for the oddball vehicle in the pack. It's called "profiling".

Going faster than the general traffic flow? You'll get pulled over. Going slower than the traffic flow? You'll get pulled over. White guy driving a nice car in the 'hood? You'll get pulled over. Black guy driving a crappy car in the upscale 'burbs? You'll get pulled over.

When behavior looks out of place, even if it's not illegal, cops work on a hunch that there are resons for it. Many of them illegal.

Every cop is looking for a big drug bust to propel his career. It is a statistical fact that when people are up to no good, they are nervous and act out of the ordinary. Profiling capitalizes on that to find illegal activity that may not be obvious on the surface.

Right or wrong, and that's very debatable, it's how they work.

btw, it has been proven that no cover, coating or other method makes your plate unreadable. Short of mud or a shop rag, that is. And anything like that is an immediate pullover.

The idea that is harder for laser to get a read, it obscures the numbers making identification more difficult, and looks.

But yes it is like a free donut to cops. A truly stupid thing to do.

They got a Porsche here last month with a dark cover. Something like$650 fine. Pocket change if driving a Porsche

Only cars I’ve seen them own have belonged to Groids or wetbacks. They usually have those stupid ass tinted headlights and taillight covers too. 🤪

And if it’s a Chevy truck or Suburban with tinted windows and the big ole sun zblue & silver Dallas Cowboys star on the tailgate or back window, it’s a safe bet it’s a Wetback.

it is probably a secondary offense like a seat belt... but how is it any different than temp tags taped to the inside of a tinted window by the dealer?

It's called using passed experience and logic to evaluate information to add up to reasonable belief that a crime may be in progress. (behavior) Since it involves a motor vehicle any and all evidence may be quickly removed. (driving away) That's why you get stopped. I agree that some officers abuse the practice.

Profiling involves the color or race of the driver and not the driver's behavior. Two different things. Besides, when you don't get a look at the driver or it's nighttime, that pretty much eliminates profiling. Unless something has changed, as I recall it's unlawful to cover a license plate in Iowa as well. A covered license plate is a behavior clue.

kwg

alwaysoutdoors: Well, my law enforcement expert, "what" do they need "to pull over a person"?
Sheesh.
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy
P.S.: I have indeed issued MANY warning citations to "persons" who were driving vehicles with "dark covers" and other situations that made readily reading their license plates difficult or impossible.
Those warning citations were only issued after the obstructing implement was removed by the "person" involved (driver).
On rare occasions the "obstructed license plate" pull-over led to felonious arrests.

There is racial profiling, there is psychological profiling, and there is behavioral profiling. All three of them are used regularly by law enforcement, to try to arrest a person who has committed a crime, is in the process of committing a crime, or is about to (consipiracy).

For example. A person who sells drugs is far more likely to be illegally possessing a firearm than a person who does not sell drugs. He is also far more likely to have illicit narcotics in his possession at any given moment. His past behavior is an indicator that he is possibly up to no good. So a cop sees a known drug dealer (white, black, or hispanic, it's immaterial in this case) driving in his car. He follows the car waiting for a traffic violation to give him a reason to pull it over. Once he pulls it over, he will ask to search the vehicle. If permission is denied, he will call in a narco dog to sniff around the car. If the dog hits positive, the police will then search the car for drugs and firearms under the auspices of "reasonable suspicion" that there are narcotics in it. The cop would in all likelihood never bothered to have done any of this if the person had a clean record. This is behavioral profiling at work.

Another example of behavioral profiling would be a car circling a small area (three or four blocks) several times. Could be a perfectly innocent explanation for it (person is lost or looking for a parking spot near his destination), or it could be that he is looking to buy drugs or pick up a prostitute. If a cop observes this current behavior, he might choose to observe the vehicle more closely and discretely, suspecting a crime is about to be committed. He is profiling based on the observed behavior.

Racial profiling is the one that gets the most attention from the media, is the most controversial, and is the most questionably legal. The media, being lazy and ignorant, have portrayed all profiling done by law enforcemnt as racial. This is far from the truth.

The other types are also controversial, and can be abused by law enforcement. The incorrect psychological profiling used to persecute Richard Jewel after the Atlanta Park Olympics bombing is an example of misusing psychological profiling to pursue a course of investigation. There was no physical evidence linking Jewel to the bombing, no eyewitness testimony linking him to the bombing, but law enforcement focused on him heavily from the get go, based upon an FBI psychological profile, and nothing else.