Earlier this year Trooper Robert Higbee stood trial in Cape May Courthouse, NJ, for blowing through a stop sign while following a speeder. He was engaged in “closing the gap” (police terminology) between the speeder and himself in order to read the license plate. Once he could read the license plate, he was under orders to contact a dispatcher.

The trial raised numerous issues of public safety in “hot-pursuit” situations. Now I’ve found another issue to add to the list: invalid license plates.

In the State of Illinois it is possible for a car to have an invalid, expired plate (and I’m not talking about stolen plates). New plates are mailed to car owners. Annual re-registrations in the form of small stickers are also mailed to car owners. The stickers have the license plate number printed on them in tiny letters.

This year I purchased my registration sticker online (because that’s now just about the only way to do it), but it never arrived in the mail. As the month in which my sticker expired came to a close, I called Springfield to find out what had happened to it and was told it must have been “lost in the mail.”

Since mail service is notoriously poor in my neighborhood, at first I accepted this explanation.

I dutifully drove to the nearest driver’s license office to pick up a replacement. There a new sticker was printed on the spot.

Unfortunately, that means there are now two registration stickers in existence on which my license number is printed. I have only one of them. (Incidentally, how do I know whether several stickers were printed at the same time? Since every printer can malfunction, there must be a way to reprint a sticker several times.)

Somewhere along the line – from the prisons where license plates are made through the mail system to a mailbox – my little red sticker found a home with someone else. I can’t help but wonder whether metal license plates get lost in the mail, too.

Unless the driver of a vehicle with invalid plates and stickers commits a traffic violation, no cop will stop the vehicle, examine the sticker to see that the number does not match the plate, or verify that the plate is registered to the VIN and driver.

Most serious, professional criminals know better than to get caught because of a stupid traffic or parking violation. And if the driver of a car with invalid plates is stupid enough to speed past a state trooper, even when the trooper closes the gap and calls in the plate,  he still won’t know who’s in the car he’s about to pull over.

Since George Ryan, the Illinois Governor before Blago, was sent to prison for extracting bribes through the driver’s license offices in the state, it gives one pause, does it not? The honest, hard-working citizens pay exorbitant amounts for valid licenses in the state. But, as usual, the crooks get a free ride, literally. And law enforcement gets the short end of the stick.

• Sidebar: In Illinois, jurors are chosen at random not only from among registered voters (many of whom are dead in Cook County) but also from among holders of “valid” drivers licenses.