Cell phones, the biggest officer safety issue today.

[txdpd]

Not the ones carried by suspects and cop blockers. The phones that it seems that 95% of officers can't live without for 11 seconds.

https://www.chron.com/neighborhood/p...g-12792088.php

Here's a video of a shooting. The officer is sending text messages at the initiation of a traffic stop. After a 30 plus second rolling stop he should have been on high alert, but he's doing phone stuff. He's doing one hand shooting thanks to that phone. Not surprised that he broke contact when he was effectively engaging the suspect, and ran behind his SUV where he gave up control of the situation. (There's another rant about "time, distance, cover" in there).

It seems like the norm now days to see cops in parking lots with thier backs to everyone and their heads buried in a phone. Or get back in their cars after a call and bury their heads in a phone. Officers that were on the phone when they were supposed to be watching suspects at calls. With body cameras we've had officers recorded texting and running code. I've seen officers at BPs light up their positions with their phones. Etc etc. It's like texting and driving, I know that everyone else can't do it, but I can't screw it up.

[TheNewbie]

I was going to call riding shotgun . Guy driving was doing 100 mph and taking calls from his wife because she gets mad if he doesn't answer.

Another EXTREMELY annoying and dangerous thing is fancy ring tones. Great way to give away your position , not to mention how unprofessional it sounds.

[octagon]

That looks to have the common failure to drop items in hand and complacency factors involved as much as cell phone usage issues. No doubt over reliance on cell phones is a growing problem in and out of Law enforcement but there may be more to it in this incident than just that.

I predict the old man ma get off my lawn rant about generational issues....in 3-2-1.

[SAWBONES]

It seems like the norm now days to see cops in parking lots with thier backs to everyone and their heads buried in a phone.

[sarcasm]Everybody else is, so why not LEOs too?[/sarcasm]

As one born in the early '50s, I absolutely despise the modern apparent acceptability of being on one's cell phone seemingly throughout the larger fraction of every damn day, whether talking, playing, texting or whatever!

Surely not every waking minute must be spent so.

Another EXTREMELY annoying...thing is fancy ring tones.

Agree, especially when unduly loud, as they seem to usually be.
If someone calls my cell phone, I want to know it, so I have an old-fashioned phone ring as the indicator, but I quieten it right away.

[willie]

If officers are ordered to leave personal phones back at the station, then wouldn't they be required to comply?

[BehindBlueI's]

If officers are ordered to leave personal phones back at the station, then wouldn't they be required to comply?

We're required to have one. Used to be a pager...

[HCM]

We're required to have one. Used to be a pager...

Pagers. Wow, Tom can we get an Old English Font for old school posts ?

[Duelist]

I would want the officers to have one on them, but using them "intelligently". We don't know from the video if the officer was texting while following the idiot, or if he picked it up off his lap or from a cubby with his left hand as he exited the vehicle, and then things got exciting fast enough that he was shooting with the phone mashed into his two handed grip.

By-the-by. They kept saying in the article that they didn't know if the idiot fired at the cop, but in the video, there is a moment when smoke comes from the muzzle of his gun coinciding with the sound of a shot. So, whether he did at the beginning of the dance or not, he did try to get a round off at the officer.

[LockedBreech]

[sarcasm]Everybody else is, so why not LEOs too?[/sarcasm]

As one born in the early '50s, I absolutely despise the modern apparent acceptability of being on one's cell phone seemingly throughout the larger fraction of every damn day, whether talking, playing, texting or whatever!

Surely not every waking minute must be spent so.

I'm a guy in my twenties who has had a smartphone since early high school. In the last year or so I have made a concentrated effort to detach from my smartphone and it's truly upsetting what an iron grip it had on me without me even realizing it. Getting all the social media apps off the phone helped but even then I catch myself aimlessly scrolling through reddit or Google News on the browser or P-F on tapatalk.

My retired 21-year LEO father, curmudgeonly, grumpy, and in his 60s, uses his phone even more than I do, but still complains about the young kids and their phones, seemingly oblivious that it has him just as bad.

I think it's not a factor of generation, simply a factor that a handful of years ago society got mini-supercomputers and we are really bad at using them in a healthy, reasonable way.

[camsdaddy]

I'm a guy in my twenties who has had a smartphone since early high school. In the last year or so I have made a concentrated effort to detach from my smartphone and it's truly upsetting what an iron grip it had on me without me even realizing it. Getting all the social media apps off the phone helped but even then I catch myself aimlessly scrolling through reddit or Google News on the browser or P-F on tapatalk.

My retired 21-year LEO father, curmudgeonly, grumpy, and in his 60s, uses his phone even more than I do, but still complains about the young kids and their phones, seemingly oblivious that it has him just as bad.

I think it's not a factor of generation, simply a factor that a handful of years ago society got mini-supercomputers and we are really bad at using them in a healthy, reasonable way.

I am trying to disconnect more and more. I find its like a cigarette most of the times Im looking at it out of habit rather than need.