The Arlington Police Community Action Team, in cooperation with the Tarrant Regional Auto Crimes Task Force, recently conducted a two-day sting operation targeting people driving cars with phony paper tags on them.
It resulted in the seizure of 13 paper tags and eight arrests.
Four of those arrests came at the end of a pursuit of a stolen vehicle, and three others involved the possession of controlled substances.
"Bad guys, when it comes to paper plates, are often bad guys on other topics as well," said Arlington Police Lt. Neal Landfield. "And so we seized narcotics through some of these traffic stops."
Landfield said fake paper tags have been a problem for many years; only recently were officers given additional tools to investigate paper tags if there's suspicion that they may be fraudulent.
"If the paper tag does not return to anybody on that or anything at all on that database, or if the tag itself returns to a different type of vehicle, that is a clue for us," said Landfield. "And we will then make a traffic stop under the reasonable suspicion of a fictitious paper plate."
Landfield says the Community Action Team is focused squarely on investigations like this one.
"My unit is not subject to most 911 calls," Landfield said. "And so when the Auto Theft Task Force said that they would like to work together with us, we knew that we would have the available time and resources to support them."
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