I have known quite a few LEOs - all now retired (I’m old) - who used their personal phones at work.

Do departments still do this/permit this?

Some may permit it, but very bad practice to be doing work stuff on private phone. If you do, your private phone (and all info it contains) just became subject to disclosure laws.

I've been retired for 8 years, but I never used my personal phone for work related activities.
As 911Boss said, if you do, it means everything in your phone can potentially be seen by way too many people if things go bad.

I use it, but not for work business. In other words, if I get a personal call or want to send a personal email sure I’ll use my personal phone. For anything work related, I use the work phone and never give out my personal phone except to my boss and coworkers as an emergency backup way to get a hold of me at work or to communicate off duty.

I retired from a state L/E investigations agency. We were issued work phones and used them. Like others have said, we never used our personal phones for work purposes so they couldn’t be subpoenaed.

Some departments don't provide phones for officers so they use their cell phones to call blocked if they need a call back that Dispatch can't do because three way conversations take up extra time.

quote:

Originally posted by Lt CHEG:
I use it, but not for work business. In other words, if I get a personal call or want to send a personal email sure I’ll use my personal phone. For anything work related, I use the work phone and never give out my personal phone except to my boss and coworkers as an emergency backup way to get a hold of me at work or to communicate off duty.

That was my practice as well.

I don't want to have to explain my visible or invisible friends in a deposition or court room

I'm not a LEO, but work for a large multinational oil & gas company (i.e. deep pockets and lawsuit magnet). I have zero desire to have my personal business subject to disclosure in a lawsuit. Therefore, I have both a work phone and a personal phone, my personal phone is not used for business, and my work phone isn't used for personal stuff.

I use mine, but never to call anyone outside my loop. I'll call other officers, DA's, Dispatch, hospitals, etc.

But, if I get a dispatch to call someone about a call or something, I go back to the station. The borough I work for is only about 5 sq miles.

We still have the choice to. My employer will provide a phone, or pay a stipend for use of your personal phone for work purposes.

I would not recommend the latter, and personal phones should be just that. With many agencies selling their soul to Axon, it can be less an issue. Because nothing digital is stored on the phone. Work related texts would still be fair game.

I was already 7 years on the job in 1998 when I got issued a brick for my specialized duty. Around that time, I got my first personal cell phone - a Nokia.

Very few people I knew had cellulars at the time, and texting wasn’t anything as big as it is now. I probably used my personal phone here and there on duty, but it became VERY common years later.

I retired from that agency, and got on with another about 5.5 years later. At that one, we were issued an iPhone for duty use, which included using the camera for digital images of crime scenes. We did send each other personal texts, but they were innocuous in case the texts were subpoenaed.

We used our personal phones for most other communications since we didn’t want our traffic spread all over the jurisdiction.

We currently have work issued phones, so I carry both. Nothing work related on my personal phone, and nothing personal on the work one. However, due to budget cuts we were just informed that they're taking the work phones away, and having us switch to using some kind of app on our personal phones that uses a dedicated phone number and puts all the data in the cloud.

I'm not sure if using the app is going to protect our phones from discovery or not...I guess we'll find out.

One thing I'm not going to miss is the annoying habit that everybody has of calling my phone while I'm busy talking on the other one. It's not like I talk on the phone a lot, either...I'll go for hours without a call, and then both ring within 2 minutes of each other

I used my personal phone going back all the way to the Motorola bag phone days. Most of the stuff I used it for was innocuous and I did not use it to gather evidence, take evidentiary photos or video interviews. Want to seize or examine my phone? Enjoy the cat photos!

Before issued cell phones, many would block their numbers before calling a complainant.

Now folks use personal for group texts with the squad etc on/off duty.

I worked patrol and used my cell to call people but always blocked my number. The PD didn't give us phones.

The detectives did get city owned phones.

We used an app (iirc it was called 10-21, the code for “call by phone”) that spoofed our number and always gave the same number, when people called it back it went to a voicemail and alerted me. It was free and was made by a retired cop.

We were told by the PD that if you used your phone it might be subpoenaed, but I never saw that happen.

When my PD issued digital camera died on a case once, I used my phone to take pics, then I emailed them to my PD email to use to enter into the case. I was never questioned when the pics were used in a case where the pics came from.

I was not worried about anything on it, I didn’t/don’t text stuff that I’d have a hard time explaining to a jury. If I call you a name it’ll be to your face.