The City of Lakewood has them, Auburn's system is about to go online and Seattle has decided to use them at some dangerous intersections. The cameras snap a photo of your license plate and you get a $101 citation in the mail.

Let's be honest - when it comes to getting a ticket, everyone wants to cheat the system and beat the cops. And for less than $50 you can buy a variety of products that claim to make your car "invisible" to police cameras.

A company in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania called Phantom Plate sells products that promise to foil photo cops and help you avoid costly tickets. Its PhotoBlocker spray sells for $29.99 a can. It gives your license plate a real shine that's supposed to reflect the flash from the camera and over-expose the photo.

The pictures on the company's Web site are impressive. The spray does seem to make your plate "invisible." But I'm a professional skeptic, so I decided to put see for myself.

Put To The Test

The Lakewood Police Department agreed to help me conduct a real-life test using their patrol car equipped with automated photo radar. They use this car to catch speeders in school zones.

For our test Officer Gail Conelly set the radar at 5 miles per hour. I could drive the legal speed limit and still trigger the camera.

First the PhotoBlocker. I sprayed two plates following the package directions. Each got several coats to make them nice and shiny.

After they dried, I installed each plate on the back of our KOMO news vehicle and hit the road. I did thirteen passes with the first plate and the camera caught me and saw my plate clearly every single time.

The second plate was also treated with the PhotoBlocker spray. This time, officer Conelly moved her car to the other side of the street. I wanted to make sure we accounted for the angle of the sun. This time I did eight passes. Once again, every picture was clear and easy to read.

The Phantom Plate corporation also sells license plate covers that are supposed to defeat the police cameras. I figured we might as well test them, too. The Reflector cover has light-reflecting crystals embedded in the plastic. The concept is similar to PhotoBlocker - reflect the flash so the camera is blinded by the light.

I put the Reflector over a different plate and got back on the road. I did eleven passes with the patrol car on both sides of the street. Once again, the automated camera got me 100-percent of the time. If anything, the reflector seemed to make the plate pop out more.

Next up, the Photo Shield. This strange-looking cover has a thin lens built into it that physically distorts the plate. That's supposed to blur the letters and numbers. If anything was going to fool the speed camera, this would be it. So, back in the car for another eleven passes.

The Photo Shield did blur the last letter on the plate slightly, although we could still tell than it was the letter H. So would that be enough to invalidate the picture and beat the system? Lt. David Guttu of the Lakewood Police department looked at those shots and said they would be admissible in court.

"All the products you tried," he said, "all failed the test." The pictures the police camera snapped were "very similar to what we normally get," Lt. Guttu says. "They didn't make the plates invisible to us."

So what does officer Conelly think about people who try to use these sprays and plate covers to beat the cop? "I think they're very gullible and they're wasting their money, "she says, "because it doesn't work.

Manufacturer Stands Behind Product

I contacted Joe Scott, the National Sales Manager for Photo Phantom and told him about our test. Scott insists his product works. He says he's sold 500,000 cans of PhotoBlocker spray and has had virtually no complaints.

"The product is designed to give you a fighting chance against these photo radar cameras." Scott told me. "It's never meant to be 100 percent guaranteed. You are better off having the products on your license plates than without. Under the right circumstances, it works."

Scott says Photo Phantom does not encourage anyone to run red lights or to speed. They just want to give motorists a way to "fight back" against automated photo enforcement.

Scott claimed our test was flawed because we worked with the police department, although he says a test done by a local TV station in Denver - working with the Denver police - shows the product works.

I contacted the Denver Police Department and Commander John Lamb (who helped with the test back in 2003) says the department "does not endorse the product, nor did we ever do a thorough test of this product." Lamb says the advertising claim that the spray was "Tested by Denver Police" is "totally false."

One more thing to consider: according to the State Attorney General's office, using one of these products violates the law in Washington State. RCW46.16.240 states "It is unlawful to use any holders, frames, or any materials that in any manner change, alter, or make the vehicle license number plates illegible."

The penalty for having an altered license plate is an $82 ticket.