News stations backed off from statements the state stopped making its screwed-up new license plates. Apparently, the state is still pounding out the new blue and white tags, despite the mounting evidence that they're unreadable at night by people's eyes and especially the newly installed license plate reading cameras.
News 2 has been doing investigative reports about the camera's inability to read the plates at night. In fact, the cameras reportedly can't even tell there's even a car to identify if they have the blue/white plate at night. (Are criminals with the new plates taking advantage of this?)
News 2 talked to Joe Patty, an ex-cop and now working with a vendor that sells and installs the license plate readers (that police say will be used to find criminals and amber alert victims). He claimed that the problem lies in the plate's lack of night reflectability.
He told Andy Cordan the same question we all have about the new plates: “I would just ask the question — Why was due process not done?”
“The end result here is, if the technology can’t be fixed, then every Tennessee tag going into the FBI database, called NCIC, is compromised, and that will compromise local law enforcement as well. Even right down to the level of a local patrol car, that’s behind a car and it can’t read [the tag] and there is an AMBER Alert, or maybe there’s a missing child in that car, or a wanted felon in that car. These are missed opportunities if these problems are not fixed.”
There have been no official statements from the state, other than this one made last week from the Department of Revenue:
“We are aware of this issue, and we are engaging in conversations with our partners at the Tennessee Department of Safety to more fully understand it. It would be premature to discuss any further actions we may take until we fully vet the concerns raised.”