Should Cops Confiscate Drivers' Cell Phones?

If you’re thinking, “Not another column about cell phone misuse,” then you're probably as frustrated as I am about the fact that many motorists are still holding their cell phones while driving despite new penalties against this activity.

I’m sure you agree with me that, as you watch motorists drive around Long Beach and its neighboring towns, you find this problem is still blatantly apparent. How many times have you seen someone holding their cell phone while driving down Park Avenue, Broadway, Long Beach Boulevard or while waiting at a traffic light?

I’ve been behind many cell phone-holding drivers and had to honk my horn to get them to move their vehicles because they are so engrossed in their conversations to realize the traffic light is green.

So, yes, I am frustrated that in spite of the new penalties that I wrote about in my previous column this problem is still pervasive. But there may be a better solution.

A retired Suffolk County Police Officer, who now lives in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, responded to my column via email and I believe that his suggestion is brilliant. Here’s what he wrote:

“I have the easiest solution to cell phone use. It is too simple to imagine no one in law enforcement has come up with this. [Police department] pulls over a person on phone. Issues a summons. What is the most important issue in a trial; it is evidence from my 24 years, including 17 in the court system. Invoice the phone, place it a locked property section of the precinct. Hold the phone until trial or disposition of the summons. How many people are going to do that twice?”

How many people are going to do that twice? It’s a question worth repeating, don't you think?  

When I spoke to this retired officer on the phone, we agreed that even with the new cell phone penalties, many people would continue to break the law, but a law in which the phones were actually taken away with stiffer penalties might actually discourage them.

Of course, if police took their cell phones away, many motorists would still go out and just buy another one, which they would view as a monetary annoyance. However, if they continued to drive and chat, as second- and third-time offenders, they would incur even stiffer monetary penalties, and eventually a suspension of their driver’s license.

I’m asking Long Beach residents to join me in seriously considering this officer’s suggestion, or feel free to give one of your own. We need to bring suggestions to the attention of our City Council members and other elected officials that, as a community, we despise distracted drivers and we want a law to stop it all.

But just as Rome wasn’t built in a day, neither was Long Beach.