What's missing from this picture?
To make a long story even longer...
I arrived home from knit night last Thursday around 10pm. Unfortunately parking was a bit scarce, so I ended up parking in a Friday street cleaning spot, knowing that I had to get up rather early to move the car.
Cut to: Friday morning, 7:30am
We get up to move both cars (we park a car for a friend) and we do. And that's when we notice that something pretty important is missing from the vehicle. Can you tell what it is?
Someone made off with the rear license plate. Ugh. Now, we can get a ticket just for parking on the street without a rear plate, so something has to be done right away.
Here are the steps to follow if you, too, are a victim of license place theft in CA:
- call local police and report license plate stolen - 7:30 am
- police arrive hours later to take report - 10:30 am
- listen to police stories about the horrible crimes committed with stolen license plates, tickets racked up, people having to go to court to contest thousands of dollars in tickets, as well as people arrested and hassled because their stolen plates were used in commission of a crime
- receive police report number - 11:00 am
- go to dmv website and download forms to report stolen license plates, then fill out forms - 11:30 am
- report stolen plate to your car insurance company (in case any moving violations etc. are committed with the stolen plates) - 11:45 am
- go to dmv with license, registration, remaining license plate, police report number, and forms in order to get new plates and registration - 12:15 pm (Note: don't forget to bring tools to remove old plate, else you end up ripping it off of the front bumper in frustration.)
- call car insurance to give them new plate numbers - 1:09 pm
So far, I only feel slightly violated and a bit put out. I guess we'll see what happens when the tickets start piling up.
Labels: license plate, parking, theft, vehicle
posted by ms. crafty @ 4:03 PM
2 Comments:
Good question about the locking bolts. I think we're going to have to get some of the ilk that have completely smooth heads. So, you can't unscrew them from the outside of the vehicle.
I'm sure this makes them equally difficult to screw in, but at least it will make stealing the plate that much less attractive.
I live in San Francisco too, and my plate got stolen, so I googled for what I should do and I found your website. Thanks for the advice. My only problem is that it's Saturday, so I have to wait till Monday to go to DMV and tell then tell my insurance company the new plate.
I parked on Potero street in the Mission, near the underpass, lots of bad things have happened to my cars over the years while parked their. Once my registration sticker got stolen, so I started scoring my stickers with knife so they would not peel off easily in on piece for the thief.
The worse was when I had a car that did not lockup, nothing to steal in it, but some junking started sleeping in it, and eventually someone shit in the car, nasty!
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