CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Deputies with the Nueces County Sheriff's Office are looking to try and recover cars that have been ripped off or stolen and are being driven around town.
Last year, Texas had over 115,000 vehicles stolen.
NCSO Patrol Captain Roland Martinez Patrol said vehicles are now equipped with a license plate reader than constantly scans traffic to pick up those stolen vehicles by their license plates.
It instantly lets the deputy know that if it's been reported as stolen.
"As our guys are patrolling it’s actively looking for stolen license plates and this thing is linked to the TCIC-NCIC system which tells us which cars are stolen," Martinez said.
He showed 3NEWS the brand new Axon license plate reader.
Corporal Randall High is excited to have the device in his unit. He said it has come in handy on more than one occasion.
"It’s been phenomenal," he said. "The amount of license plates that we have been able to recover to stolen vehicles that we’ve been able to recover."
On this day, High didn’t find any stolen cars, but there were plenty of folks driving around with temporary paper license plates or no plates at all.
Those paper tags can’t be read by the license plate reader.
Those instances require the skills of the deputy to be able to look for the signs that they’re counterfeit.
"That’s more of an investigative thing, that’s more of a hands on thing," Martinez said. "There’s little details on the Texas plate that shows that it’s valid and our guys are trained up to know whenever they see a fictitious one. We have probable cause at that point to initiate a traffic stop and then start an investigation based on that. The system, this system itself won’t give us that information right off hand like a hard plate would."
Back on Sept. 4, deputies in Refugio County were able to spot a counterfeit paper license plate and stopped the vehicle and found a huge cache of weapons hidden inside, including a machine gun.
The state is getting rid of paper tags soon. July 1, 2025 is when metal tags will take the place of those often counterfeited and altered paper tags.