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In 1989, I had a California-licensed car in Michigan, with custom plates. California has front and back license plates, Michigan only has (or at the time only had) the back plate. Someone stole my front plate, and to order a new one, I needed a police report stating it was stolen. So I made a report, and ordered my new front plate from California. However, Michigan mistakenly categorized the plate as stolen. Two interesting incidents followed.
A friend borrowed my car to take his date to a Pistons game. On the way there, he decided to open my car up on the freeway, and drove into a speed trap at over 120 mph. He pulled right over, and the stop quickly shifted from a speeding stop to suspicion of GTA. He was handcuffed, held along the road for about 30 minutes until the police determined the car wasn't stolen. Once GTA was ruled out, he didn't get any ticket at all, and made it to the game with his date just in time.
I tried to clear up the Michigan record on my plates to no avail. When returning from Windsor, Canada, I got sent into secondary at border control. This time in addition to suspicion that the car was stolen, Border Patrol thought my bolted-in roll cage might be stuffed with drugs. They partially disassembled the cage. About two hours later, I was cleared to proceed. That was a boring and frustrating 2 hours for me and my two passengers.
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