In May 2016, Motherboard reported on the Philadelphia Police Department using a truck with what appeared to be a Google Maps logo on it to conduct surveillance. After that article was published, Philly PD put out a statement indicating the "placing of any particular decal on the vehicle was not approved through any chain of command. With that being said, once this was brought to our attention, it was ordered that the decals be removed immediately."

If law enforcement is now resorting to the use of fake Uber cars to disguise police work, it wouldn't be terribly surprising. After all, there's a healthy amount of information out there these days about how to spot an undercover yellow cab in New York alone. And if old-school taxis continue to [fall by the wayside](http://But yellow cabs — which now number just 13,587 — have lost significant ground to a growing fleet of black cars summoned by ride-hailing apps with short, catchy names and loyal followings: Uber, Lyft, Via, Juno, Gett. The average number of daily taxi trips fell by more than 100,000 in November 2016 from the same month six years ago as these apps have taken off. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story Today, more than 60,000 black cars are for hire in the city. More than 46,000 are connected with Uber, though they may also work for other services too. And the competition is fierce.)—there were nearly 50,000 Ubers in the city compared to fewer than 14,000 yellow cabs as of January—their presence may grow more conspicuous. Large swaths of the country may already be at or near the threshold of ride-share saturation such that a black car with an Uber decal is the most effective cloak there is for an undercover.