Car Phone

The Howard County Council began its budget deliberations last week looking a bit like the Cheshire cat of "Alice in Wonderland." With what seemed a self-satisfied grin, the Republican-majority council took punitive action against one of its own, approving new limits on council members' spending.The move, aimed at former council chairman C. Vernon Gray, a Democrat, caps spending on car phones at $1,500 a year and limits mmbers to $200 for transportation, food and lodging for each event they attend.

Sarah Finlayson's morning routine is fairly set. Wake up early. Workout with a trainer. Call her twin sister.  Picking up a hitchhiking John Waters? That's not part of it. Yet the minister's wife from Baltimore stopped her Lexus for the filmmaker and gets the credit for launching his cross-country hitchhiking journey. Finlayson, who's a 59-year-old wife and mother, was driving down Charles Street, heading home from her workout and chatting on the car phone with her twin sister who lives in Jersey.

On the afternoon of April 4, Charles St. Lawrence left his office shortly before 3:30 p.m., got into his car and picked up the phone. Within the next two hours, he made seven calls and talked for 25 minuteson the car phone, billed to the county Housing Authority.It was a typical day for St. Lawrence. The chairman of the housing agency's governing board often uses the car phone several times a day in running the county's low-income projects.St. Lawrence, a Severna Park resident and U.S. Census Bureau official who has served on the seven-member volunteer board since 1988, benefits from an unusual arrangement.

A Carroll County program that provides senior citizens with cellular phones for emergency use while traveling will be introduced at state and national conferences on aging next month, a state official said yesterday.Sue F. Ward, secretary for the Maryland Department of Aging, took that news to the county commissioners in Westminster yesterday, saying the innovative safety program called "Cellular Safety" could spread throughout Maryland and beyond.The free program, which began in January, is sponsored by the county state's attorney's office, the Sheriff's Department and the county's Bureau of Aging.

When Howard County Councilman C. Vernon Gray is on the road, he's also on the phone, according to county reimbursement records.Mr. Gray, D-3rd, has billed the county for $4,606 during the past 16 months for calls he has made from his car phone. His total amount of reimbursed expenses -- $8,311 -- was nearly half of the $17,435 the county has reimbursed the five council members from July 1, 1991, to Oct. 31 of this year."If it were not for the car phone, I could not respond as quickly as I do," Mr. Gray said.

The chairman of the county Republican Central Committe has asked the County Council to divulge who Democrat Councilman C. Vernon Gray has been calling on his car phone."

A Pasadena man was charged yesterday with hiring a hit man for $20,000 to kill his fiancee during a staged robbery, all in hopes of reaping a financial windfall, according to Baltimore police and the victim's relatives.But the scheme that left Teresa McLeod dead and the suspect wounded Friday night quickly unravelled as city police investigated several discrepancies in the man's account.Ironically, although police and relatives said the suspect, Robert Harris, 23, hoped to cash in on a life insurance policy, the victim's mother said yesterday that the $150,000 policy was intended to benefit the victim's 9-year-old son.Police yesterday arrested Mr. Harris, of the 1000 block of Tennant Harbour, at his lawyer's office in downtown Baltimore and charged him with first-degree murder.

POLICE* Westminster: A resident of Liberty Street reported someone forced open the door of her car and stole a car phone Thursday. She estimated the loss at $200.

POLICE LOG* Woodland Beach: Someone broke into a 1989 Honda Accord parked in the 600 block of Darlington Road Wednesday night or Thursday morning and stole a disc radio and a car phone.

POLICE LOG* Jumpers Cinemas: Thieves stole a car phone of undetermined value from a car in the 8100 block of Ritchie Highway between Friday and Saturday.* Pasadena Yacht Yard: An outboard motor worth $3,500 was stolen between Friday and Saturday from a boat in the 8600 XTC block of Fort Smallwood Road.

A Carroll County program that provides senior citizens with cellular phones for emergency use while traveling will be introduced at state and national conferences on aging next month, a state official said yesterday.Sue F. Ward, secretary for the Maryland Department of Aging, brought that news to the county commissioners in Westminster yesterday, saying the innovative safety program called "Cellular Safety" could spread throughout Maryland and beyond.The free program, which began in January, is sponsored by Carroll State's Attorney Jerry F. Barnes, Sheriff Kenneth L. Tregoning and the county's Bureau of Aging.

Fear not, chatty drivers. You can keep talking on your cellular phones.The House Commerce and Government Matters Committee killed a bill yesterday that would have banned drivers in Maryland from using their phones while driving.The measure drew support from only two of the committee's 23 members -- Del. John S. Arnick, the Baltimore County Democrat who sponsored the bill, and Del. Adrienne A. Mandel, a Montgomery County Democrat.Arnick said he proposed the bill because of the dangers of distraction and of having one hand busy with a phone rather than the steering wheel.

Wireless Zone, a fast-growing wireless communications retailer, is targeting the Baltimore area, where it plans to open a dozen stores by the end of the year.The chain's franchiser, Connecticut-based Automotive Technologies Inc., also operates the Car Phone Store, the leading wireless retailer in the Northeast with more than 90 stores in seven states.The company is moving into the mid-Atlantic and changing the name of its stores to Wireless Zone.All stores will be franchise operations.The first Wireless Zone opened at the end of December in Columbia.

Christmas cards from police departments don't wish anyone holiday cheer. Instead, the greetings offer advice on how to avoid getting gifts stolen long before they're wrapped."

THAT NEW ENGLAND Journal of Medicine article about the hazards of talking on car phones while driving sounded familiar when I read about it last week. I could swear I heard somebody sounding this warning before. Who was it? Then I remembered.Stokes.A couple of years ago an obscure former state delegate named Charles W. Stokes Kolodziejski, a nice old guy from blue-collar Carvel Beach in northern Anne Arundel County, sponsored a bill prohibiting drivers from holding car phones while they're moving.

Talking on a cellular telephone while driving quadruples the risk of having an accident, making it as dangerous as driving while drunk, Canadian scientists report in today's New England Journal of Medicine.The first large study of the wireless phones, which now number 34 million in the United States, found to the authors' surprise that so-called hands-free phones are no safer than conventional hand-held phones."This may indicate that the main factor is a driver's limitations in attention rather than dexterity," said Dr. Donald A. Redelmeier of the University of Toronto.

POLICE LOG* Marriottsville: 700 block of Driver Road: A .357-caliber Magnum handgun and other items were stolen from a home Monday after someone kicked open the side door, police said.1200 block of Marriottsville Road: A burglar kicked open the door of a house and its garage Monday, ransacked the interior and stole cash, a car phone and video games, police said.

FireHampstead: Firefighters from Manchester and Westminster assisted Hampstead at 11: 23 a.m. Wednesday, responding to a combine fire on Route 482. Units were out 52 minutes.PoliceHampstead: A resident of Fairmount Road told police that someone stole a car phone from his unlocked vehicle while it was parked in his unlocked garage between 3 p.m. Monday and 11 a.m. Tuesday. The loss was estimated at $160.Pub Date: 11/22/96

Cellular phones are being stolen at epidemic rates in Baltimore, a crime wave driven by thieves' and drug dealers' demand for cheap phones that can't be traced.Nearly two dozen phones disappear every day in the city -- most of the thefts accompanied by a shattered car window. In the first seven months of this year, 9,507 cars were broken into; in about half the cases, cellular phones were taken.The outbreak is fueled by a high-tech, $600 million criminal industry that has turned a hot commodity of the '90s into a tool of the drug trade.