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CHICAGO, IL_ After more than four years of work, neighborhood leaders from five Chicago neighborhoods can claim a statewide victory for safer streets. Neighborhood residents, law enforcement representatives and elected officials from around the city turned out in downtown Chicago to celebrate the issuance of the first fraud-proof and traceable Temporary Registration Permits (TRPs) in Chicago. Until now, Illinois has had one of the most slipshod systems of assigning and monitoring temporary auto plates in the country.

Easily counterfeit paper temp plates made it easy for drug dealers and other criminals to forge plates and get away from the scene of a crime without anyone being able to trace their vehicle. "Our hope is that the new TRPs will put the drug dealers out of business and protect our families," said National Training and Information Center, executive director, Gale Cincotta. NTIC has helped spearhead the fight for the past four years on updating Illinois's TRPs.

At a meeting at NTIC in early June, a representative of the Secretary of State's office assured a room full of neighborhood residents, police officers, and city employees that the new TRPs are "virtually fraud-proof." This is good news for neighborhood leaders that have been fighting to fix Chicago's TRP problem for years. Sylvia Ramos, a neighborhood leader with Nobel Neighbors, a community organization on the Chicago's Westside knows all too well the kinds of tragedies that faulty TRPs are responsible for.

Ramos's nephew was killed in a drive-by shooting on July 29, 2000. There were more than twenty witnesses to the crime, but the TRP was unreadable and couldn't be traced. The killer has never been caught. "I'm glad no more gangbangers will be switching temporary plates," Ramos said. The Illinois Secretary of State's Police reported that more than one in 10 recent traffic stops for faulty TRPs in Chicago have uncovered drug-related, weapons-related and other serious crimes. Criminals driving cars with counterfeit and untraceable TRPs committed several recent murders and hit-and-runs, including the murder of a Jewel-Osco employee in Chicago last winter.