LITTLE ROCK — It’s illegal in Arkansas for anyone other than a police officer or coroner to buy blue lights that appear to be for use in an emergency vehicle.
But Arkansas lawmakers who passed the law in 1997 didn’t foresee 99-cent applications that can turn a smart phone or tablet computer into a reasonable facsimile of a dashboard blue light.
“There’s no way you could envision something like that,” said Kevin Smith of Helena-West Helena, who as a state senator in 1997 was the lead sponsor of Arkansas’ main blue-light law.
In light of the new technology, Smith said the law “ought to be tweaked.”
Arkansas Code Annotated 5-77-201 makes it a felony to buy or sell flashing blue emergency lights or blue lens caps for any purpose other than law enforcement or for use by a coroner. The penalty for a conviction is a prison sentence of up to six years.
The Legislature passed the law after a man dubbed “the blue-light rapist” terrorized women in eastern Arkansas over a 21-month period in 1996-97.
Robert Todd Burmingham of St. Francis County was convicted in the attack on a 17-year-old Cabot girl who pulled over when she saw a flashing blue light from his car. Burmingham, who was not a police officer, is serving life in prison.
“We were dealing with kind of a panicked environment back then,” Smith said. “It made us realize how easy it was to acquire law enforcement paraphernalia and romp around pretending to be a police officer.”
Smith said he wasn’t aware of smart-phone blue-light applications until informed by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. While the law passed in 1997 helped the situation then, regulating Internet sales would be difficult, Smith said.
Sgt. Cassandra Davis, a spokesman for the Little Rock Police Department, said she hadn’t heard of the bluelight applications for smart phones.
A smart phone is a cell phone that can access the Internet.
If a person suspected of violating the state’s blue-light law has a smart phone in the car, police officers may have to check it to see if there’s a bluelight application, she said.
“It’s probably just another challenge we’ll have to overcome,” she said. “With technology, it just becomes more difficult.”
Since the law was enacted in 1997, reports of police impersonators and blue-light violations have happened periodically, said Bill Sadler, a spokesman for the Arkansas State Police.
The Sebastian County sheriff’s office is investigating an unsolved blue-light incident from April.
A Hartford woman said she was stopped by a man with a blue light on his dashboard and a gun on his hip. He shined a flashlight in her eyes and ordered her out of the vehicle where, she said, he tried to sexually assault her. When a car drove slowly by, he got up, kicked her in the ribs and drove away in a black Crown Victoria.
Last month near Harrison, a man in a police car pulled over a woman, told her to slow down and left her a card stating “Call me.” The name on the card wasn’t that of a local police officer, and the telephone number had been disconnected, said Boone County Sheriff Danny Hickman.
Sadler advised people to use caution if they suspect a blue light in the rearview mirror isn’t from a police car.
“Whenever there is doubt in the mind of a driver who may be victimized by the criminal use of a blue light in an unmarked vehicle, the state police offers the advice to proceed at a posted speed to a location where people may be gathered or other motorists can witness the stop,” Sadler said. “The driver can also call 911 to let an operator know of the attempted stop and their intention to pullover at the first convenience store, gas station or a location where others can see what’s happening.”
The sale of blue lights and lenses similar to those used by police must be reported to the state police under the blue-light law, Arkansas Code Annotated 5-77-201. Over the past year, two businesses reported selling 38 blue lights in Arkansas, according to state police records. Sadler said he was unaware of smart-phone applications that mimic a police car’s blue light.
Apple’s App Store has several blue-light applications, as does Google Android’s applications store.
From the App Store, a 99-cent Police Light application provided a bright, oscillating light that looked realistic, in particular, when displayed on an Apple iPad, which has a 9.7-inch-by-7.3-inch screen. The light can also be used on an Apple iPhone, but the effect isn’t as realistic on the iPhone’s 3.5-inch-by-2-inch screen.
Other Apple applications, such as Fuzz Lights ($1.99) and Outta My Way! (99 cents) also provided flashing blue lights that could be mistaken for police lights if used in a vehicle,particularly when displayed on an iPad.
Fuzz Lights describes its application as “just like the police lights that Starsky & Hutch had on the dashboard of their undercover police car.” Starsky & Hutch was a television show that aired from 1975-79.
Christine Monaghan, a spokesman for Apple, said she was unaware of any problems with blue-light applications being used illegally. Monaghan said thousands of applications are available in the App Store’s entertainment category, from which blue-light applications can be purchased and downloaded.
Sam Mollo of Optimum Drama, which developed the Fuzz Lights application, said he hadn’t heard of anyone using it for illegal purposes, but he had heard from an off duty paramedic who used it to help an injured person in a crowd.
Arkansas, Pages 13 on 08/10/2011