‘Ghost striped’ police vehicles fly under radar

If you look twice, it’s too late.

Motorist scofflaws or criminals under surveillance might not notice the maroon or silver SUV parked along the street at first, and that’s on purpose. The new vehicles deployed by the Kendall County Sheriff’s Office are “ghost striped” with the agency’s logo, meaning that it can only be seen at certain angles or when headlights reflect on it.

Additionally, the cars are passenger SUVs and have light bars in the windshield as opposed to on the roof, like many modern police vehicles. The new vehicles were purchased in January.

Sheriff Dwight Baird said police vehicles are becoming better at hiding their true stripes, as to better catch speeders and to perform surveillance.

“Everybody knows the traditional police car: it’s got the light bar on top, it has very identifiable markings,” he said. “Some agencies have the smooth top cars, some of them have no striping on them at all – they just have a municipal plate. The State Police has them, a lot of municipal departments.”

Baird said the ghost striping “helps identify us, but it’s not readily identifiable.”

“If you’re driving down the road, you’re probably not going to pay attention to that car,” he said.

However, Baird said the car is identifiable when they make a traffic stop.

“You usually associate getting stopped by a person with the lights on top and they have markings on the car,” he said. “We took the lights off the top but we have a lot of emergency lights on them – strobes and such. And with the ghost striping, when you open the door and you see it at a certain angle, it’s going to be reflective and really identifiable to them.”