Online Exclusive: Dial M for Mayhem

It’s time to face the facts: cell phones truly are dangerous. But forget recent reports suggesting that driving drunk causes fewer traffic accidents than driving while talking on a mobile, and disregard those rumors purporting that cell phones cause cancer. Much more distressing is the emerging trend of using wireless phones to beat the snot out of people.

A few weeks ago, James Junta--the brother of killer hockey dad Thomas Junta--was charged with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon after hurling a cell phone at a Best Buy clerk because the store wouldn’t take the phone back without a receipt. Junta allegedly smashed the phone, launching a chunk of plastic a dozen feet, where it struck the clerk in the leg. “I got upset, threw it on the floor, stomped on it and threw it over the counter,” Junta said. “I didn’t mean to hit her.” (Note to the Juntas: Decaf, boys, decaf.)

And just last week, an Atlanta-area mother allegedly attacked her first-grader’s teacher with the teacher’s own cell phone and coffee mug--in front of the entire classroom, no less.

It makes you wistful for the good old days, when at worst folks used their mobiles to organize Brazilian prison riots and such. So when did cell phones become the wireless equivalent of brass knuckles? Sure, everyone talks about cells as accessories, but they mean fashion, not accessories to a crime. Lately it seems that the wireless industry just can’t catch a break--if cell phones aren’t disrupting classrooms or churches, they’re causing highway fatalities, making users ill or now just laying the smack down on your ass.

What’s sad is that in the right hands, cell phones could serve as instruments of peace. Angry at someone? Just send them a nasty text message--a simple “You suck” is so much more humane than the beating of a lifetime. Wireless communications were meant to help people, not harm them--you should only be dialing 911 via your mobile to report heart attacks and stuff, not to report that you’ve been beaten bloody with said mobile device.

Can’t we all just get along?