Dallas Burglars approve of new cell phone ban

DMN has two stories that highlight the opportunity cost of stupid laws.

Story 1- East Dallas is being hit with a rash of home robberies. If you live in East Dallas and someone breaks in the door, it’s either a robber, or the SWAT team looking for poker games.

Story 2- The Dallas City Council passed a new city ordinance that prohibits using a cell phone in a school zone. By all accounts this law is a solution without a problem. The Dallas City Council continues their proud tradition of incompetence.

Statistic- Last year Dallas had over 15,000 home robberies. Dallas also had no deaths caused by a cell phone, in a school zone.

Opportunity Costs are real.This new cell phone ban will be good at two things- raising ticket revenue (taxes) and wasting officer time. However, it will do nothing to stop the city’s real crime problem- home burglaries.

Every stupid law, every speed trap, every pot arrest or poker bust wastes criminal justice resources. An officer writing a ticket for using a cell phone can not prevent or investigate a home burglary.

These two stories are two sides of the same coin. Our stupid laws- from Prohibition to Poker- prevent the police from keeping you safe. This new cell phone law is not only stupid, but dangerous.

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February 28, 2008 at 11:44 am

Flower Mound recently passed a similar law. Of course, in FM there really is no crime problem at all, or even any crime. But that didn’t stop them from recently raising the sales tax by 1% in order to fund MUCH needed increases in police officers and equipment. The existing officers primarily focus their efforts on speed limit enforcement. How many speed traps can a given town have at any one time? I don’t know the answer, but the Flower Mound Town Council plans to find out!

February 28, 2008 at 12:07 pm

Robert I guess I’m missing this one. Is there some concern about a kid getting run over because of a distracted driver, or is this one of those things like not having a bright enough license plate light that serves no other purpose than to justify pretextual traffic stops?