As Chicago police investigate a Wednesday supermarket robbery on the Northwest Side that left a store worker dead, a critical piece of information is missing. The getaway car was seen, but it had no vehicle license. The car had a small, temporary permit stuck on it.
The temporary permits have become a favorite of thieves, drug buyers and others who want to escape detection. The permits are so small that it’s almost impossible, from any distance, to read off an identification number and track down the owner.
Police say the stickers are easy to counterfeit and hard to read. The stickers are issued by 7,000 car dealerships, currency exchanges and other businesses, so tracking them is difficult. Because the stickers are so tough to trace, an underground trade in them has developed.
Solution? Easy, you say. Replace them with something larger and easy to read.
Yet the South Austin Coalition Community Council, a West Side organization, has been complaining about the temporary stickers for seven years. Residents say the orange paper strips are easily moved from car to car, and stymie identification in hit-and-run accidents and drive-by shootings.
In 1998, George Ryan, then the secretary of state, promised to fix things. Ryan said that, within a year, the state would replace the 3-by-8-inch paper strips with a 6-by-12-inch reflective bumper sticker that would be harder to copy and easier to read.
But nothing was fixed. The secretary of state’s office fiddled while all the old problems festered.
Ryan moved to the governor’s mansion and his successor, Jesse White, followed up with months of study, consultant contracts, projects, recommendations and expenses, but no fix.
It’s coming, we’re told. But businesses that issue temporary licenses will be required to transmit information to the state over the Internet, said Edmund Michalowski, director of vehicle services. That means those businesses will have to own computers and modems and learn how to file the data. That means delaying the introduction of a new program–and new plastic temporary plates–until July.
July? After all this time without results, Jesse White had better expect some deep skepticism about that promise. He had better make good on it. July or sooner.
