An Oakland woman discovered that her license plates had been swapped with stolen plates that were linked to a serious crime — after she was pulled over by Hayward police who were tipped off by a Flock license plate reader.

As Oaklandside reports, 65-year-old Ann Nomura of Oakland was pulled over by Hayward police earlier this month and told to exit her car with her hands up, after deputies flagged her car as being tied to a serious crime — only to find she wasn’t connected to the case at all.

Authorities said the stop was triggered by a Flock license plate reader that had scanned the plates on her car, which turned out to have been switched out with plates tied to the incident.

“That is when it sort of hit me that I was being treated as a potential criminal and could have been hurt,” she told Oaklandside.

According to KGO, the process is called “cold-plating,” which helps thieves evade police detection in break-ins, robberies, toll evasion, and, now, avoiding speed cameras.

Sgt. Roberto Morales with the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office told Oaklandside that the tactic has been common over the years, but authorities haven’t consistently kept track of reports. Morales said the proliferation of speed cameras has made authorities more aware of the problem in recent years.

“If you don’t know how often license plates are stolen in Oakland, you don’t know how often this is going to happen,” Nomura said, speaking to the Oaklandside.

In 2022, SFist reported that SFPD had uncovered a large plate-swapping operation, discovering tools inside a stolen Audi along with evidence suggesting the tactic was used to mask stolen vehicles and avoid detection.

Additionally, according to Oakland Redditors, cars that are missing license plates altogether are all too common in the city. One user said they even saw a car with a handmade plate. While the Redditor referred to it as a “handwritten paper plate,” SFist is going to assume they don’t mean an actual “paper plate.”

Nomura, speaking to Oaklandside, expressed concern that cold-plating could lead to crime victims paying the price. While the Oakland Police Department and the Alameda County Sheriff credit speed cameras with catching large numbers of suspects since their respective installations, some residents are concerned about potential privacy violations.

Brian Hofer, a former Oakland privacy commissioner, points out that authorities are required to utilize other evidence in addition to speed reader data, in accordance with Senate Bill 34. Per Oaklandside, Hofer is currently suing the city of Oakland for violating the measure, claiming that officers often rely solely on plate-reader alerts without verifying details like vehicle make, model, and color.

He pointed to a previous case in which he and his brother were mistakenly stopped at gunpoint after driving a rental car that had been recovered from a theft, but was never removed from a law enforcement database.

“OPD could run the plate, and the image will pop up, and they should have some sort of visual confirmation to be like, ‘wait a minute, this license plate was on a silver Corona, now it’s on a red Ford 150,’” Hofer said.

Nomura counts herself lucky that no guns were drawn and that she was treated professionally, but she told Oaklandside that the ramifications from the incident were not insignificant. She said she not only had to replace the stolen plate in order to drive her car again, but it also came with a hefty fee for expedited shipping.

She also learned the hard way that she was supposed to report the plate stolen with Oakland police, which had to be done in person, as San Rafael police called her days later saying her car was used in an attempted robbery.

Previously: License Plate Theft Victim Uncovers Elaborate Criminal Scheme After Getting Hit With Massive Parking Tickets

Image: Hayward Police Department/Facebook