file photo by Boyd Loving
Police are exempt Here is why they are exempt:
Police often use cellphones for work, freeing up radio airtime while they make calls related to police business. Sometimes they need confidential information that they don’t want to be picked up by anyone listening to a police scanner.
Other times they are calling people who have called police. And cellphones are a handy tool when calling another police agency that does not share the same radio channel.
But why can’t they make those calls on hands-free devices? Here’s one reason: Many officers wear an earpiece for their portable radio in one ear, and background noise from police radios, scanners and sirens can make hearing difficult. Fitting a Bluetooth headset over an existing earpiece is not practical, police say.
