Grand Prairie Police Chief Tells Lawmakers– New Paper Tags Won't Stop Crooks

The Texas Department of Motor Vehicles rolled out newly designed temporary paper license plates on Friday, designed to be harder to counterfeit.

But at a Senate Criminal Justice Committee hearing in Austin, hours after the new tags made their debut, police told lawmakers they don’t think the new design will stop crooks who keep printing them and slapping them on cars across the state.

Grand Prairie police chief, Daniel Scesney traveled to the state capitol to tell senators Texas should simply get rid of paper tags.

“Anybody with a computer and a printer can make a tag,” Scesney told lawmakers.

Scesney’s testimony comes less than a month after one of his officers, Brandon Tsai, died in a crash while pursuing a car with a fraudulent tag. Police said the tag on that car had been spotted on more than 200 other cars in the DFW area.

At the Capitol, Scesney sat down with NBC 5 Senior Investigative Reporter Scott Friedman to talk about his push for change.

“We are going to scream from the rooftops. I can tell you we are going to get to the tallest mountain and make sure that officers Tsai's name and the circumstances surrounding his death are heard,” said Scesney.

At Friday’s hearing the Texas DMV touted a new paper tag design – just released Friday -- saying it will help reduce counterfeiting.

“The launch of the new design will make it more difficult to counterfeit a temporary tag and in those cases where criminals attempt to do so it will be immediately identifiable to law enforcement who can take more immediate enforcement action,” said Roland Luna, Deputy Executive Director for the Texas DMV.

Cheif Scesney believes the state should switch from paper to metal temporary tags.

“I am not here to shoot arrows at anyone I appreciate the work that the state is doing to fix the problem but there is still more work to be done here,” Scesney told NBC 5 Investigates in an interview at the state capitol.

Scesney and other law enforcement officials told NBC 5 even the new tag design uses a PDF format. That provides a template that they say crooks can use to scan, alter and print the new tag design too.

Others in law enforcement echoed Scesney’s call for paper tags to go.

“You take all of those out you go back to plates and I will assure you we are going to stop this,” said Sgt. Jose Escribano, Travis County Constable's Office Precinct 3.

Over the last year, NBC 5 Investigates exposed how some small car dealers were using the DMV’s own system to print and illegally sell hundreds of thousands of real tags – on the black market

Since our reports – new TxDMV leadership has made major changes to shut down crooked dealers.

“Even after the bumpy road we have taken to get here the department has taken decisive action and impactful action,” said TxDMV Executive Director Daniel Avitia, at Friday’s hearing.

But police say bad guys have shifted to simply copying tags using those pdf templates.

In Grand Prairie, where officers are still reeling from officer Tsai's death, the chief says his department encounters fake tags every day and investigators are already involved in a new investigation of a delivery company suspected of using them.

“His employees can't pass state inspection with their vehicles so he is just printing off license plates in his office and handing them out to his employees. Right now. That case just came in yesterday,” Scesney told NBC 5 Investigates.

The TxDMV told NBC 5 Investigates it cannot switch to metal temporary tags without a change in state law, but an agency spokesman said the department is willing to discuss any new proposals with lawmakers.

Rep. Craig Goldman from Fort Worth has already introduced a bill in the House that would make the switch to metal plates. And at Friday’s hearing, senators said they will have more hearings to discuss solutions when the legislature is back in session in January.