On Patrol and Almost Undercover

What a SLICK idea! You can’t even tell that’s a police cruiser.

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POLICE car No. 1453 drifted along with the afternoon rush, unnoticed and unhurried. Even, perhaps, unfinished.

Car 1453 looks as if it rolled off the assembly line a few minutes too soon, before arriving at the machine that puts the siren on the roof and the colors on the door decals. But this look is the whole point of No. 1453, which is known throughout the Westchester County police department by its catchier nickname: the ghost car.

“Can you see it?” an officer joked, standing in front of the car in the department’s parking lot.

The police hope that the answer among drivers texting or chatting on cellphones, or speeding or driving drunk, is no.

The car, a 2009 Crown Victoria, joined the fleet two months ago. It is not an unmarked police car, but rather a barely visibly marked police car. It bears all the same decals as a regular police car, but they are white, colorless, like the car itself. The markings really are noticeable only upon close inspection — and hardly noticeable at all, the thinking goes, to a driver who is calling in his pizza order.

“You’re seeing more of what the common man sees,” Officer Brian Tierney, 32, said about the advantage the car bestows. “Everyone’s on their best behavior when the teacher’s in the room.”

Across the country, states are stepping up their efforts to curb distracted driving. Lawmakers have proposed more than 200 bills; Kansas is considering a ban on texting while driving, and in Alaska, a bill was proposed to ban all cellphone use behind the wheel.

Several states have banned texting, but not talking, behind the wheel. New York is among the states, including Connecticut and New Jersey, that have banned hand-held cellphone use while driving. But proving that someone is breaking those laws is tougher than writing them.

“It’s really, really, really difficult to enforce that,” said Jonathan Adkins, spokesman for the Governors Highway Safety Association. “You can’t have a law that the public doesn’t support.

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