Anchorage

New texting penalties proposed for Anchorage drivers

Anchorage's new attack on texting while driving was unveiled Friday: a big $500 traffic ticket, but no threat of jail time.

The change, to be formally introduced at Tuesday's Anchorage Assembly meeting, takes texting violations out of the realm of state criminal law and into traffic court. Officials say that will make it easier to prosecute violators because a jury trial will no longer be needed. Only four convictions for texting or operating a screen device while driving have been recorded in the city since 2011, city prosecutor Seneca Theno said in a memo Friday.

The changes come as the administration of Mayor Ethan Berkowitz seeks to fill a city budget gap by revising fee structures and implementing inflation-based increases for hundreds of traffic tickets and city fines and fees. The new penalties for texting violations and other new penalties could recoup an estimated $275,000 annually for the city, according to documents submitted to the Assembly on Friday.

The state texting law would remain on the books and would be the prime means of enforcement for texting while driving outside the city limits. Right now, driving while texting or operating a screen device carries maximum penalties of up to a year in jail and a $10,000 fine.

But Theno said in the memo that the few Anchorage drivers who have been convicted of texting since 2011 have received small fines, short probation terms and often suspended jail time.

Since 2011, police have forwarded to the city prosecutor's office just 20 charges of texting or using a screen device while driving, according to Theno's memo. Of those, only four cases have resulted in convictions.

The low volume of cases "can be attributed in part to the difficulty of obtaining high quality evidence sufficient to convince a jury that criminal conviction is warranted," Theno wrote.

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"Cases are often made on admissions with only minimal corroborating, usually circumstantial, evidence," she wrote.

In an interview Friday, Theno said a lot of texting incidents lead to crashes and property damage. But she said the charges are often dropped in plea deals negotiated while prosecutors are pursuing penalties for other criminal charges in a case, such as reckless driving.

That means the defendant in those cases is never actually penalized for texting or using a screen device while driving, Theno said.

Under the proposal, officers in the field will only need to observe the behavior themselves and find probable cause for a traffic ticket, Theno said. In traffic court, a magistrate would decide a conviction, not a jury, and the defense wouldn't require counsel.

At $500, the fine is the largest the police department has in its arsenal, said Anchorage police spokeswoman Renee Oistad. The violation would go on a person's driving record, though not their criminal record, as is the case now. It's not yet known how many points would be accumulated by a driver for a texting violation, Oistad said -- the state Department of Motor Vehicles, not the city, assigns traffic points.

Theno said she and APD traffic unit supervisor Sgt. Roy LeBlanc came up with the proposal while reviewing fine increases. She said that while the Berkowitz administration is proposing increases to most city traffic tickets, in this case, lowering the total texting penalty by taking it out of criminal court and eliminating potential jail time actually made the most sense.

"Actually decreasing the nature of the penalty will allow us to increase enforcement and allow an increase in deterrence," Theno said.

If approved by the Assembly, the texting violation change would take effect Jan. 1.

Devin Kelly

Devin Kelly was an ADN staff reporter.

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