Question about police procedures. [View all]
Two days ago, when I was driving home, I was approaching an intersection with a three way stop sign when a police car sped to the stop sign to the right of me. I stopped first, but it was clear this policeman was in a hurry. There were no lights on the car but he was going well over the 25 MPH before making a hard, but controlled stop. He had an earnest look on his face and had something to his ear. I waved him on and he took the offer without a glance of acknowledgement. Well, he didn't have a free hand to wave back, now did he?
Only now am I analyzing the situation. What was he holding in his hand? They don't use CB radios anymore. They have all the communication gizmos installed in the car. So what was he holding?
That's where we come to my question. Are police officers allowed to take calls on their private cell phones, directly from citizens in the community? If so, if they are responding to those calls, aren't they circumventing a transparent process which would reveal who is controlling their actions?
This is a concern to me because I live in a good ole boy community and there's been far too many coinky dinkys, lately. This community does have a precedent of targeting individuals and organizing to hound them. Some of the things they did were included in a legal complaint and the plaintiff settled with the city in the nineties to the tune of 2 million. I just hope the city employees learned from their mistake, even if some of the architects of that scandal didn't.
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