Dan's Papers - April 11, 2008 - An Update On The "Tahoe To Go" Story

When you last heard from me, I was getting out of my car in front of Citarella in downtown East Hampton to discover three police cars parked around my '07 Tahoe and two police officers ready to tell me they were going to impound it, which they subsequently did.

This happened on the afternoon of Saturday, April 4 at 4 p.m., a cold and windy day, and after they hauled the car away, we stood there shivering on the street corner with our shopping bags wondering how we would get home. When friends drove by, we hailed them and they stopped. So that's how we got home.

We've been renting cars since this happened. As this is written Monday, nine days later, the car remains impounded and it will probably stay that way for several more days. Albany has "straightened out" the situation. But it only updates its computers every three to five days. When that happens, the car will be released, and at what cost, I will tell you next week. (It can take up to a half hour to find somebody to talk to in Albany.)

As it turned out, the fault with this does not lie with my insurance company, me or even with the East Hampton Village Police who did what they had to do, respectfully and accurately. It was a mistake made, in my opinion, by East Hampton Village in ordering and activating something called a license plate reader.

Before they got it a short time ago, I wrote that this was going too far, that it eliminated the gray area where you could have this draconian measure because there were mitigating circumstances.

The license plate reader is a computer mounted on top of a police car to read every license plate at which it is pointed. Drive down the slow lane of a road with the reader pointed toward the parked cars, and it will pick up any discrepancy that would come up in the paperwork of any car in that row, instantly send the information up to Albany, and instantly call for action to be taken on what is found.

I do see that this can, and does, dramatically increase the revenues for a village. (Build a statue to this man on the Town Green.) And I can see that it can result in catching all sorts of people who are flaunting the law. It also, however, can catch people caught in a paperwork foul up, as it casts its great net across the parking lots, which is what it did in this case. There is no middle ground or safety net anywhere when it comes to a license plate reader.

In this case, I was being caught because of a 14-day lapse in my insurance that occurred a year and a half ago. The lapse began on October 17, 2006, and it ended on October 31, 2006.

After looking into this, I find that on the morning of October 31, 2006, I turned in a leased '05 Land Rover 4-wheel drive to the dealer in Southampton, took the plates off it, got a lift to the Chevy dealer, Buzz Chew, less than a half mile away, and reattached the license plates to my new '07 Chevy Tahoe with 4-wheel drive. Paper work was filled out and it was done correctly. I have seen the paperwork from my insurance company. All that paperwork is in order too.

But the lapse occurred BEFORE this transfer. The new purchase ends the lapse. So during the last ten days of my owning the Land Rover, Albany suspended my registration, because of a paperwork foul up in the overlapping coverage.

"This happens all the time with Albany," my broker said. It's a big Manhattan brokerage company. "We just point it out when it is brought up and it is fixed retroactively. This is the first time it's come to a seizure in my experience."

Ah, but they don't know about the zapper on the roof. East Hampton Village is the first on Long Island to have one!

Wouldn't you think if this were the old days, maybe three months ago when they didn't have the license plate reader, the officer would have said, we are showing that your registration has been suspended for some reason. Take it home and park it and don't use it until you get it straightened out? My address was right on there. I live less than three miles away. And I suggested it.

But no. The gap between when he had learned of the suspension and the issuance of the seizure order was now zero. There is nothing I could do, the officer said. Take your things, pay your fines, figure out how to get home. Your car will be in the impound area on Accabonac Highway. You'll get your car back when it's over. And you're lucky you weren't driving when the computer found you. You'd have been arrested.

The fines will be $150 in cash for the impound, $15 a day for every day it is impounded for storage, and whatever Motor Vehicle in Riverhead might decide on. They could order a continued impoundment. They can fine you $8 a day for this. Or they can forgive all or some of it.

I can also tell you that in November 2006, there was a letter from Albany telling us of the suspension. We gave the information to our Manhattan broker, and he wrote back informing us the error had been retroactively fixed. Apparently it was not.

About ten years ago, the government announced that they had the ability to put together a national database on every citizen in the country. The nation rejected it.

I saw on the CBS news on Thursday morning that there is now a device that can link your car dealer's computer and your engine. If you're late on a monthly car payment, bingo, your car gets shut down with a one-finger tap of a key. Big insurance companies are looking at purchasing these devices.

I say there are certain things that have been invented that should never be put into commercial use. The national database was one of them. The car engine turn off is another. Throw the license plate reader in the dumpster too if you can't put something into effect to deal with paperwork snafus. It's where it belongs.