CAR TAX dodgers were being brought to book in York today in a crackdown on motoring crime.

Police predicted that Operation Chevron, a roadside sting by North Yorkshire Police and the DVLA in the Tang Hall area, could see up to 20 drivers losing their vehicles.

Police hope the operation - the first in North Yorkshire to target a specific community - will hit criminals who use untaxed, unlicensed and stolen cars.

The sting comes only months after statistics showed no fewer than 28,000 cars were untaxed in North Yorkshire alone - at a cost of £2.7million to the Exchequer.

Police and DVLA officers were today using automatic number-plates recognition (ANPR) technology to pinpoint offenders by scanning the number-plates of passing vehicles and putting them into a computer to check for any offences.

Tax dodgers were then being pulled over and asked to make a £200 credit card payment, of which £80 is an automatic fine and £120 is a surety payment which gives them the chance to produce a valid tax disc.

They could then drive away, but would lose their £120 if they did not buy a tax disc within the period of grace they are granted.

Those who refused to pay the £200 were seeing their cars towed away to be crushed, possibly within a week.

Police said if they were unable to find the driver of a parked, untaxed car, the vehicle would be towed away regardless.

By 9.45am, 15 minutes into the crackdown, the first motorist had been cornered in Melrosegate with a tax disc seven months out of date.

He was pulled over, and charged with having no insurance or MOT. He could not pay and his car was towed away.

David Hoe, 29, and Emma Wright, 32, of The Groves, York, had the untaxed Ford Escort they bought for £100 only four days ago towed away before their eyes after they were stopped by police in Hewley Avenue, at 10.15am.

They had a £300 television in the back seat and Miss Wright said they had no way of carrying it home and no way to pay £200 to the DVLA on the spot.

Miss Wright said: "We only got the car four days ago and I didn't even know it wasn't taxed."

Updated: 14:17 Tuesday, August 03, 2004