After Jan. 1, the paper dealer plates that traditionally come on new vehicles sold in California will be no more. 

And law enforcement officials appear to be onboard with the change. 

Approved by the California Assembly in 2016, the law – AB 516 – will force car dealers to generate and print temporary license plates that must be displayed on vehicles when they are driven off the lot and will create a database of those temporary plates that are searchable by law enforcement and parking and toll enforcement entities. 

“It creates a link back to the DMV and that can be very helpful with things like the homicide that we just had in Newman of a police officer – it allows investigators to know who the vehicle is registered to rather than just where the car was purchased,” said Manteca Police Department Public Information Officer Stephen Schluer. “It’s not going to be retroactive – cars that are sold on Dec. 31st and before aren’t going to need to have the new plates – but it will be something that will help provide more information to law enforcement and prevent things like toll evasion.”

A California dealer plate became the focus of a statewide manhunt earlier this week after Newman Police Officer Ronil Singh was killed in the line of duty by a suspect driving a truck with a dealer plate out of Merced. Because no database exists, investigators likely weren’t able to pull the records of the sale until after the dealership opened, despite the fact that the shooting happened hours before. 

By the time that the vehicle had been located, permanent license plates had been attached to it in order to evade capture.

According to acting Lathrop Police Chief Ryan Biederman, the new law will help provide law enforcement with additional information that can be vital in tracking down suspects or learning about those that have committed crimes elsewhere, but it will likely also lead to an entirely new form of fraud. 

“Right now, we have people that forge their registration stickers to prevent from being pulled over, and sometimes they just ‘cold plate’ a license plate from a registered vehicle altogether – and there are any of a number of reasons from being unlicensed or suspended to not being registered that they would do that,” Biederman said. “And while this will help provide more information, I think that it will eventually lead to people just forging the new temporary plates themselves, and that’s something that we’re going to have to be cognizant of. 

“In Lathrop we’re talking about having license plate readers and those won’t pick up the temporary plates because they aren’t going to draw from the same database, so that’s something else that we’ll have to keep in mind.”

According to transportation studies conducted in the Bay Area over the last several years, toll evaders that either affix dealer plates specifically to avoid detection or wait to put on their permanent license plates are racking up $15 million a year in unpaid tolls. The new bill will allow tollbooths at bridges and in express lanes to better identify violators that have so far gotten away unscathed. 

 To contact reporter Jason Campbell email jcampbell@mantecabulletin.com or call 209.249.3544.