From five feet away it looks like an innocent leaf, but not to this Manhattan resident with a trained eye.
Imagine you work for a city that relies heavily on speed and toll cameras to catch law breakers. You also have insider knowledge that, if a small part of your plate is obscured, even if you’re caught on camera, the city can’t move forward with your violation without a 100 percent full plate number.
New York is such a place, with several city employees well aware of this clever loophole that, if they bend, deface, and “natively” obscure their license plates, they can get out of photo enforced traffic tickets.
Not only do city employees know this but upstanding citizens, like journalist Liam Quigley, who, despite these city employees best efforts to obscure their plates, know that city employees know this and can spot offenders sticking out like sore thumbs.
Quigley is not only unbothered and brave enough to not only correct offenders and their plates on the spot, he also shares his vigilante justice on social media.
Quigley recently shared his latest correcting of a wrong doing, removing a strategically placed leaf sticker on this New York State Court Officer’s personal vehicle license plates.
Check out his video below.
Helping out a NYS Court Officer who somehow had a leaf taped to their plate pic.twitter.com/9aBmb3FRiM
— Liam Quigley (@_elkue) February 16, 2022
@DedonatMax pointed out how this court officer also strategically scratched out the letter ‘H’ to further confuse a traffic cam.
They also totally scratched out the cross bar on the H. pic.twitter.com/qx2WuJuWN4
— max dedonat (@DedonatMax) February 16, 2022
Unsurprisingly, this is not the first time this particular Nissan Sentra has been caught pulling off this trick, with several other Twitter users sharing their own leaf sticker ripping off experiences on the exact same Sentra.
@_elkue style. pic.twitter.com/62CuEq0GZ6
— Bike Lanes (@NYCBikeLanes) January 25, 2022
I thought I fixed that for them last week :/ pic.twitter.com/uAAtcNpY3r
— Julianne Cuba (@Julcuba) January 25, 2022
This Court Officer is no stranger to getting photo enforced tickets, their plates bringing up eight traffic violations in the last six years, the last seven in 2020 and 2021 alone.
Here’s a map of all their violations.
Someone pointed out how these stickers come in packs of 1,000, a low barrier to entry to break the law.
“According to New York State Vehicle and Traffic Law, any glass or plastic material added over the surface of a plate, or any substance applied to the surface of the plate intended to conceal or obscure plate information, is illegal and carries a fine of as much as $200,” DMV spokesman Joseph Morrissey said.”
Quigley has been highlighted and praised for his unique way of dealing with plate obscurers before, his previous exploits highlighted by the New York Post back in 2020.
And here’s the Twitter video that brought awareness to these low-level scofflaws.
It’s the friends you make along the way pic.twitter.com/IkRGsMVCQJ
— Liam Quigley (@_elkue) August 14, 2020
It’s not surprising people will use their knowledge of the law to their advantage, but it’s somewhat disturbing that city employees would so wantonly flaunt the law with their insider information.
If this bit of trickery is more public and normalized among their inner circle, one can only imagine the levels of corruption and law side-stepping that happens away from the public eye.