Today my wife and I were driving home from dinner and had just gotten on I-5 south to get to 163 North when she saw a San Diego County Sheriff’s Deputy driving with a cell phone to his ear. Yes, this is illegal in the state of California! If he had been seen by a highway patrol officer, he should have been given a ticket (the city of San Diego has a 30 day grace period, but he was on the freeway). However, it is completely unlikely that he would have been pulled over. What is this behavior teaching others? Are law enforcement officers exempt from the laws? I’d hope not, but sometimes they act like they are. While on the topic, yesterday I saw a San Diego Police motorcycle officer make a right turn on red without even stopping. Now if I had done that, I would have been pulled over, but this officer (who didn’t have his lights and sirens on) decided to break the law. Could I or should I file a complaint about either of these incidents? I have the identification number of the Sheriff’s car, so I could file a complaint, but it would take too much of an effort to do so. (If someone from the Sheriff’s department wants to contact me, I’d be more than happy to supply the information about this.
Not Sure about down in SD, but most people up here in Sacramento I see do a “California stop” when doing a right on red. I mean if I see it’s blatantly clear, I ain’t stopping. Yes, I still see cops with the cell phone in the ear, but also a lot of others. At our weekly safety meeting we usally have an officer there for questions and he was saying that he won’t pull anyone over for just being on the phone, there has to be something else like speeding and then he’d ding you for both. I have a friend who is a city utility worker and there department just blew a few grand on Bluetooth kits for their fleet and then another few grand on new Bluetooth phones, and yet each vehicle has a CB. Talk about wasteful spending.