The police are prosecution. They claim they don't have quotas, but with any job, there are unsaid quotas.

I worked in IT help desk, and I was told our department wasn't opening and closing enough tickets to justify our department's existence. So I changed the sensitivity of our network monitoring system for our SDWAN and wrote a script that would automatically create a ticket and close it pretty much if a single packet was lost. I was hailed a hero as the bean counter CTO wasn't going to review the actual tickets, but he got the metrics he needed for the meeting.

This kept a team of 14 quality support technicians employed. This stupid trick I rolled out over a weekend kept families fed for a good five years, delaying the inevitable layoff.

And we all found better jobs and left at our own pace.

But I digress, it isn't like the police work on commission (eh... well drugs disappear... and bribery and extortion exist...) but if you aren't writing tickets, then the prosecutor is going to bitch because they aren't handling enough tickets to justify the department of prosecution.

So cops will look for any packet loss. Registration is said lost packet. The same for insurance, any discrepancy in your license, and if your license plate isn't perfectly mounted on your vehicle. Just fucking anything.

You have insurance but don't have the latest card on you? They will write a ticket. You take the insurance card to the county clerk and they throw the ticket out and cancel the court date. Makes no difference to the cop, as it boosted his KPI.

"Yay, I am halping! Pay me!" Oh, how the bureaus will burrow.

Both of those cases would only apply if the cop's computer shows the vehicle as unregistered, hence why the cop would ask in those cases. It doesn't explain why they ask for it every time, even when the vehicle is registered normally.

Hmmm. That's an excellent idea.

Yes it does lol, read through random court records sometimes when you're bored, you'll be shocked what you find.

Don't give them any ideas.

And it's common for vehicle thieves to swap plates on vehicles that they steal. They may want to check to match the registration and the plate.

It's an analog breathalyzer?

This is the correct answer. Last time I was pulled over the officer only asked for my license, actually.

"May I see your license, please?"

"Yes sir."

"Thanks. Are you aware that your passenger brake light is out?"

"No sir."

"Get that fixed as soon as you can. Here's your license. Drive safe."

In fairness, I'm a middle aged white man, so I'm aware that I run basically every police interaction in easy mode.

Hell, I caught a ticket for not carrying my registration on a canoe. They always fuck with me because they assume I'm running a trolling motor without registration, despite the perfectly legal numbers I put on the side.

"Your license. Where's your license?" "It's back there on the bumper, man!"

Why even bother with the sticker then lol

These were phased out in Australia like 20.years ago.

Because when they pull you over and sit in their car for a minute before getting out, they are calling in your license plate number and make/model/color of the car. The dispatcher types it into their system and radios back to the officer with the owners name, address, whether the registration is valid, and whether the owner has any warrants out for them. They will automatically have all the information about the registration before they even get out of their car.

This is based on my personal experience as a campus police dispatcher in college more than 40 years ago. I'm sure by now, they have data terminals in the car they can type it in and look it up themselves.

The stickers in Florida have the tag number on the sticker. Very obvious if its on the wrong tag.

cause you are usually told to score the sticker with a sharp knife so if anyone tries to rob it it tears to pieces.

In my state they can pull up your insurance too, they just don't.

I wonder how much of the shitty societal problems are just rich people passing fear and purity to try to avoid paying taxes

Tangent

Do the cops not have access to the registration records on a digital system?

Wat? That makes no sense?

"This car is registered to someone else."

"Yes, I'm borrowing it"

"..."

"You must be a criminal?"

Absolutely right. No love from the peanut gallery, though...

No, you can drive other people's cars.

It's pretext to catch you slippin.

Sounds like cop is at fault.

Tell him to fuck off and stop endangering others.

It is likely that the law requires you to show proof of registration, so he was just trying to catch you in a gatcha situation where you didn't have the paperwork that he knew existed. Like how you are required to carry your license with you even though they can just look it up to confirm you are licensed.

in Texas i think it goes on the windshield? idk i never registered a car there

It depends on the state

I watch bodycam vids. It still gets asked.

The state

Which state? It's different everywhere. Most still require you to put registration stickers (AKA tags) on your license plate.

In what countries?

the plate lookup they do anyways, where they get all the info digitally

In my state they put the license plate number on the sticker to discourage easily slapping a valid one on a different plate. If someone is forging that they can probably forge the registration paperwork.