Police officers and texting while driving

[Aragarthiel]

Someone in my area took a picture of a police officer caught texting while driving. This got taken to the media, who found that the state law that outlaws texting and driving has an exemption for police officers on police business.

As you can imagine, people are outraged by this. A police officer has no reason to be texting when, if they have to contact someone, they can use their radio or simply call the person, which will let them keep their eyes on the road.

A small group of people is okay with this, though, saying that police officers need to stay in touch with the other officers and their dispatcher at all times, and that includes texting.

Some police stations have policies against texting while driving, but not all of them. While they are really only allowed to be texting if it's a business matter, I think we all know that some of them are going to either misunderstand the law or take advantage of it and use it as an excuse to text anyone at any time, on-duty or off.

[HYHYBT]

Seems an awfully silly exemption to have, given the reasons the rest of us aren't allowed to text while driving.

[telecom_goddess]

I don't give a fuck if one is a cop you can still get killed from the distraction of texting while driving!

[Shangri-laschild]

I don't really agree with police being able to text and drive. There are other methods including the radio or hands free phone call. I will say that there are semi similar things that I am less against. Can't say for certain that it's the same in every state, but my officers have their car computers that let them run drivers licenses and license plates. I can understand why stuff like plates might get run while they are driving. Though that's one touch of the screen to pull up the license search and then entering the plate. It wouldn't be a bad idea for the programs to have the kind of software that allows for doing it all by voice though. Not sure if some areas do have that. We are a small enough department to only have the lite version of the program.

[BlaqueKatt]

I don't really agree with police being able to text and drive. There are other methods including the radio or hands free phone call.

I can think of several scenarios where a phone or radio call could get someone killed.

Here's one:
I had the "fun" of watching a "no knock" S.W.A.T. raid across the street, they had to wait for a perimeter to be set up before commencing. If the people in the house had a police scanner(unknown), radio is out, and a phone call, even on vibrate you have to speak, so the officers on the perimeter blocking traffic, were texting that they were in position.

[TheHuckster]

the officers on the perimeter blocking traffic, were texting that they were in position.

The police sending those messages have parked their cars, presumably, so they're safe. If they need to send those texts to officers on their way, the safest thing to do is have two officers per car for these types of situations, with the passenger receiving the texts. Either that or they have a system where the police enroute have it set up so texts are dictated to them electronically.

Officers who are on their way to a scene, especially while their sirens are on and they're trying to get there ASAP, are even more vulnerable to distractions. Not that it really matters, since studies have proven time and time again texting while driving in any situation is dangerous.

[Shangri-laschild]

I can think of several scenarios where a phone or radio call could get someone killed.

Here's one:
I had the "fun" of watching a "no knock" S.W.A.T. raid across the street, they had to wait for a perimeter to be set up before commencing. If the people in the house had a police scanner(unknown), radio is out, and a phone call, even on vibrate you have to speak, so the officers on the perimeter blocking traffic, were texting that they were in position.

Oh, I'm not against them generally texting when they aren't driving. There are actually things in place at least where I live so that people can't scan necessarily. If you want to listen to general radio traffic, you have to get a very expensive scanner now that we upgraded the radios along with a lot of the nearby local police. We also have incident channels for things like swat and if we want to train someone and have them do fake radio traffic to practice. Stuff like that. Some of the incident channels, including swat, are locked down meaning it doesn't matter if you have a scanner. The radio that our swat guy has had to be specifically set up to be able to receive that channel. Yes, it does still involve radio traffic though there are codes that can be used for things like "in position" so it isn't necessarily clear what they are calling in. Also, the laptops in the cars can send messages to the other laptops so there are multiple ways of safely communicating.