In the month of February, Issaquah police took multiple reports of missing license plates and one report from a citizen who believed they witnessed a failed theft in progress.

The Reporter reached out to the detectives’ division of the Issaquah Police Department to find out what’s going on, what motivates license plate theft and what citizens can do to protect themselves.

First thing’s first: Police are not presuming a pattern in the most recent spate of thefts.

“We get these reports kind of sporadically and most often we’re seeing them in the areas of town right off of (Interstate 90), where someone can get in and out of town quickly,” Det. Laura Asbell said. “Sometimes it’s just a coincidence and we’ll see two, three or four reports in a short period of time. Or it can be that people don’t realize it’s been stolen out of town and they only realize their plate is missing when they’re here.

“And, of course, sometimes it’s just fallen off their car.”

However, there is one major motivation for thieves to steal a license plate, Asbell said: To hide the theft of a vehicle.

“The way our patrol guys will check for a stolen vehicle is to scan the plate,” she said.

Issaquah police patrol cars, and the patrol cars of many other American police departments, are equipped with Automatic License Plate Recognition technology for routinely checking plate numbers against state and national databases — including the National Crime Information Center, which maintains a record of cars listed as stolen. If the plate belongs to a reported stolen vehicle, that’s one of the first things an officer sees.

But thieves can conceal a stolen vehicle by replacing its plates with plates from a “clean” vehicle, which can make them undetectable until the plate is reported stolen or officers conduct a deeper check on a plate number that reveals an inaccurate car description.

“It buys them a little bit of time,” Asbell said.

The best way for drivers to combat license plate theft is to be aware of their vehicle, Asbell said. She suggested drivers make a habit of quickly circling and examining the outside of their car anytime they prepare to go for a drive.