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Texas Sheriff’s Office Using Ghost Camaros With Barely Visible Decals for Patrol

The Harris County Sheriff’s Office is flooding the streets of Houston with deceptively marked police vehicles. These cars feature so-called “ghost decals” and can be extremely difficult to identify on the road.
Chevrolet Camaro ghost cars 6 photos
Photo: BruceAllmiighty / Twitter
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Their choice of a patrol car is the Chevrolet Camaro, which does come with police graphics, lights, and sirens, except that you can’t really see them. They also don’t have emergency lights on top, but that was to be expected. The graphics themselves are reflective and blend in with those white exteriors.

The idea of a “ghost car” isn’t new to Houston, with the Harris County Constable’s Office having used Ghost Patrol Vehicles as far back as 2013, reports Chron.

According to authorities, this is more than just some scheme for handing out more speeding tickets. The idea behind the Ghost Camaros is “to support our multi-pronged efforts to get dangerous drivers off our streets so that we might ultimately shed our region’s dubious distinction for having the nation’s deadliest roads,” explained the Harris County Sheriff’s Office.

As you can imagine, people feel certain ways about this approach, with some arguing that the police are doing nothing more than hiding from the very people they’re supposed to protect or that they care more about traffic stops and quotas than protecting and serving.

"We spend millions in taxpayer dollars so the police can whip around hellcats but the post office still driving those WW2 jeeps,” said Twitter user @BradyRufo. This one’s a little funny and somewhat true, but there’s a false equivalence there to consider.

Still, one can argue that there’s not much of a difference between an unmarked police unit and a Ghost Camaro, but good luck making that argument in court, seeing as these Chevys technically do have markings. Then again, if authorities only use them exclusively to pull over practitioners of dangerous driving and not people going 1 mph over the speed limit, that can only be seen as a good thing.

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About the author: Sergiu Tudose
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Sergiu got to experience both American and European car "scenes" at an early age (his father drove a Ford Fiesta XR2 supermini in the 80s). After spending over 15 years at local and international auto publications, he's starting to appreciate comfort behind the wheel more than raw power and acceleration.
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