Offensive Honolulu license plate still on the road one year later
By Tom George
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HONOLULU, Hawaii (KITV) — It’s an incendiary message that first caught drivers’ attention almost a year ago: a vanity license plate with an expletive-laced message “FCK BLM”, or Black Lives Matter.
The license plate was first spotted in August 2021, and the City and County of Honolulu told us that the vanity license plate was an “ill-advised oversight”, as any requests with the letters ‘FCK’ or ‘FKN’ are automatically rejected.
At the time, the city said the plate was recalled and the owner would have to surrender it. But recently, people reported the car was still driving around with the plates. The city now says the owner was given three messages telling him he needed to surrender the plate, but he ignored them.
“If you claim to be the Aloha State, then do something about it, “says UH Manoa Law professor Ken Lawson, who is Black. Lawson says the lack of urgency in the case has been a problem. “The fact that you didn’t do anything may be more proof that his license plate may be correct that our lives don’t matter, that our feelings don’t matter, that these types of things can be publicly done,” he says.
In a message to KITV4, the Department of Customer Services (CSD) said “we have sent three letters to the registered owner recalling the license plate. However, the registered owner has failed to surrender the plate. CSD has placed a hold on further renewals of his vehicle registration and his registration is now expired. HPD is able to cite the vehicle if it is being operated on the roads.”
So what happens now? At this point, the registration and safety check are both expired, and a hold has been put on renewals, meaning the driver will have to get a standard plate and surrender the vanity plates.
In the meantime, HPD tells they can’t go on to private property to remove the tags, but they can pull over the car when they see it. So far, that hasn’t happened.
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