Posted on USA Today Network, December 18, 2023: The New York Department of Motor Vehicles announced a new line of 10 regional New York license plates earlier this year, releasing them one by one over the summer. The license plates feature colored designs incorporating a well-known natural or manmade landmark from each region, with the region name listed under the license plate initials.
Additionally, the state offers plates that highlight New York-centric events and activities, like the New York State Fair or horse racing at the Saratoga Racecourse.
Gone are the days when prison wardens had their inmates stamp out humdrum license plates, all bearing the name of a state in clear but drab black letters cribbed from the prison infirmary eye chart. Instead, states seem intent on channeling their inmates’ time and citizens’ money into license plates with snappy captions, arresting graphics and eye-catching designer colors.
Today’s license plates may feature landscapes, seascapes or pictures of oil derricks; for an extra fee, they may display state wildlife or athletic mascots such as Nittany Lions, bulldogs or tigers with prominent fangs that undoubtedly brought joy to the hands of the hardened criminals who created them.
Will this trend toward ever more expensive, decorative and expressive license plates continue to serve valid law enforcement purposes? That is, will increasingly ornate plates help to assure the arrest of enough felons to keep producing license plates states can sell as revenue sources? To the eyes of future traffic control officers, the names of states may be obscured by the limbs of magnolias or the hats of pacifist Quakers ( made at one of those country club prisons for non-violent insider traders); to their radar guns and cameras, the numbers on the plate may become an unreadable jumble interspersed among Adirondack peaks, Manhattan skyscrapers and the hooves of Saratoga racehorses.
Imagine a car careening down the interstate with shotguns from every window scattering lead across all nine lanes of the Baltimore-Washington Beltway. On a billboard advertising the services of a nearby law firm, Justice has had her blindfold removed and looks on with horror. Behind the billboard sits a patrol car in which one of the officers consults an APB.
“Hey, Clem, that might be Bonnie and Clyde. Should we go get ‘em?”
“I don’t know, Roscoe, but they sure are violating a few anti-littering ordinances with those bullets from the sawed-off Uzis and Ak-7’s.”
“Clem, see if you can get a read on the plates.”
“Sure, Roscoe. Looks like a R, then a waterfowl of some kind, then there’s what could be a couple of T’s, or the just may be cattails in the foreground of a moonlit marsh, and then there’s a zero, or an O, or a hole with a Golden Gopher crawling out of it.”
“What about the state?”
“Well, Roscoe, the print’s petty small because of all the visual imagery. There seem to be quite a lot of letters. Could be one of the Carolinas or the Dakotas or Rhode Island. It could say, ‘Roll Tide, Roll.’ I can’t say for sure. Awfully pretty colors, though.”
“Must be connected to that new Fauvist exhibition down at the museum. Let’s check it out, Clem.”
“Roger and A-OK, Clem. And let’s not forget the croissants and café au lait at the members’ café.
Could the criminals have devised this trend toward designer license plates so that, upon their eventual release, they and their confederates could not only go back to robbing banks, but be able to use the diamond car lane illegally to make their getaways? Possible, but not likely. Rather, I think that, with computers and AI at their fingertips, the idea of simply checking out run of the mill numerals and letters began to seem a bit pedestrian to a new generation of law enforcement officers. In the age-old confrontation of cops and robbers, designer plates put some of the fun back into law enforcement as well as prison life. Now every car chase after a speeder driving on the wrong side of the expressway has become a cerebral adventure as well as a physical one, a car chase movie and Sherlock Holmes story all rolled up into one.
“What have we got, Clem?”
“Appears to be a vehicle travelling one hundred miles per hour without headlights while honking loudly in a hospital zone. Could be another one of those berserk heavy metal guitarists, Roscoe.”
“Now let’s not jump to conclusions, Clem. Remember all the trouble we got into for interfering with a presidential motorcade.”
“Well, it could have been an unlicensed escort service offering passengers carriage without passive restraints.”
“Give me a read on the plates, Clem.”
“Upper left corner has a large-beaked, broad-winged, sharp-taloned avian species, possibly a scarlet tanager. Pretty far north of its range, though, according to Roger Peterson’s Field Guide, third edition.”
“But you’re forgetting your basic Heraldry 101 aren’t you, Clem?”
“You don’t mean…?”
“Why, yes, Clem.”
“Of course. Just like that tapestry at the Cloisters. The falcon rampant on a field of rosebuds surrounded by wolves, in this case wolverines, actually, form the University of Michigan.”
“Which last won the Rose Bowl when, Clem?”
“Why, 1990, 1991, I don’t remember exactly, Roscoe, and the department no longer pays for the Annotated History of Big Ten Football. But I don’t think this is a pigskin matter after all. I think this has to do with the Fab Five that won the national basketball championship. I should have seen it before, but I was bemused by the juxtaposition of the Mary Cassatt-like coloring of the plate and the hard-edged number 1993 on the lapsed inspection sticker.”
“Early Mary Cassatt, or late Mary Cassatt, Clem?”
“It’ll take a few minutes to run it through the authoritative bios and catalogue raisonees, Roscoe.”
“Sure were a lot of red herrings in this one, Clem. Speaking metaphorically, of course. This is another one of those cases that would have gotten away without semi-otics.”
“Should we make the old metaphorical pinch?”
“Sure, Clem. But let’s not make it too metaphorical. I say we pull them over by the diner with the good prune Danish.”