Police Seize 54 'Ghost Cars' In Washington Heights And Inwood

UPPER MANHATTAN, NY — Uptown streets got safer Sunday night, when police seized 54 "Ghost Cars" in Washington Heights and Inwood's 34th Precinct.

The vehicles use fake license plates that are often used to evade parking rules, red-light cameras, tolls, or as getaway cars in crimes across the city, police said.

"The law is coming after anyone who tries to make their car untraceable," Mayor Eric Adams wrote in a tweet. "We will not allow vehicles to be weaponized and our streets to be turned into a battlefield."

The rounding up of "Ghost Cars" in Upper Manhattan comes one week after Adams and the NYPD held a press conference saying they would crack down on the issue.

The 34th Precinct covers Washington Heights and Inwood, north of West 179th Street in Manhattan.

In the past, the city has specified Upper Manhattan as one of the hot spot areas for the problem, and community Facebook groups are full of complaints about seeing the paper plates on a daily basis.

The problem has only grown worse since the pandemic, when shut-down DMVs extended expiration dates for many of the temporary plates.

More than 3,560 drivers using the illegal temporary plates were arrested last year, a 300-percent jump from just several years ago in 2016, officials said. In 2021, cars with illegal plates were behind nine traffic fatalities, police said.

The NYPD has already issued 16,448 tickets to drivers using the illegal or obstructed license plates, has towed 1,700 vehicles, and seized 2,478 of the cars so far this year, officials said.

About 34 percent of the "ghost cars" towed by the NYPD this year were never claimed by their owners, a statistic officials said proves they were likely stolen or used in illegal activity.

Patch reporter Anna Quinn contributed to this report.