November 19, 2007 -- The federal government may have a $25 million reward for fugitive terrorist Osama bin Laden, but a retired city cop says the Department of Motor Vehicles has banned his "GETOSAMA" vanity license plates as offensive.
Arno Herwerth, 42, a retired NYPD sergeant from Hauppauge, in Suffolk County, told The Post he's flabbergasted by the DMV's kibosh, terming the agency's move as "unpatriotic" and political correctness run amok.
"This is unbelievable," an angry Herwerth told The Post, insisting he's puzzled at how his support for a US foreign policy goal can be viewed as objectionable.
"It's unpatriotic and absolutely disgusts me that anyone would consider that in any way offensive other than if you're a member of al Qaeda," Herwerth said.
"You look back at Pearl Harbor and WWII and you wonder, would they be offended by, 'Get Hitler'?" he lamented.
DMV spokesman Nick Cantiello insisted the "GETOSAMA" plates violate a regulation that bans any tag that is "obscene, lewd, lascivious, derogatory to a particular ethnic or other group or patently offensive."
Herwerth spent nearly 21 years with the NYPD before retiring in June, and he's certainly no stranger to controversy.
In November 1990 while on patrol in the Melrose section of The Bronx, he shot and killed a woman civilian who took his nightstick during a domestic dispute. He was tried on criminally negligent homicide charges and acquitted.
He said he received the "GETOSAMA" plates about two weeks ago and wanted to affix them to his red, white and blue 1993 hand-painted Ford Aerostar van to remind people Osama bin Laden is a fugitive with a price on his head.
"I just think it's been too long since he has been out there. He should have been caught and personally, I think he should be killed, but the plates don't suggest that - they say we should 'get him,'" he explained.
He had already been billed $68 for the plates, including a $43 "personalized plates" fee, but when he called a DMV clerk last week to complain that he hadn't received his matching vehicle registration, he was told the plates had been sent to him in error.
"He was stunned that I got [the plates] and that they had gone through . . . and then said, 'We're going to have to reinstate your old plate number.' "
"The plates were inadvertently given out," explained Cantiello, adding that the agency expects Herwerth to return them.
"There's a screening process, and it slipped through. As soon as the screening process found out about it, they were rescinded." Herwerth noted, however, that for nearly two years, the DMV did nothing about a controversial vanity plate they issued him - "STOPCCRB," a dig at the Citizens Complaint Review Board, the city agency that monitors the conduct of NYPD cops.
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Originally Posted by The Prophet
