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Claim: Man who can't motivate police to investigate a break-in reports a more serious crime instead.
Example: [Collected on the Internet, 2001]
Origins: The preceding gem began its Internet life in November 2001. A version variously titled "How to work the system" or "How to speed up a 911 call" was subsequently presented as a first-person piece rather than a news account, but it's the same story, just told in a different way. Some of those versions end with the tag:
Like I've heard my cop friends say many times, if you're one of those people (i.e., gun-control nuts) who wants to abdicate responsibility for your own safety and leave it to the "proper authorities," try this: call the cops, call for an ambulance, and call for a pizza - then wait and see who shows up first.
Despite claims of this story's having been run in the Meridian Mississippi Star, searches through the online
archives of that paper fail to turn up the piece. Moreover, the writing style used in the item should discourage anyone from believing a journalist penned it. But just to be sure, we contacted the editor of that paper to ask if the piece had ever appeared in its pages. His response was a short, succinct, authoritative "No."
Funny stories are often presented as articles that ran as news items because some find "wacky news" tales far more appealing than they do plain unvarnished jokes. The "false but authoritative-looking attribution" is a common device in such mailings, one the savvy Internet user learns to watch out for. Could this story have happened anyway? Since we penned this article in April 2002, the major elements of the Internet forward have come true at least once. In September 2003 a minister in Odessa, Texas, who felt police were not responding quickly enough to his call about a burgled church The concept of telling a lie to get the police to a crime scene more quickly keys on a basic yet false assumption that if officers of the law are tardy in responding to a summons for aid, their seeming non-response is prompted by sloth. Police have to prioritize calls for assistance based on the comparative severity of presenting events and/or the potential for further harm to those involved. Under such a formula, investigating a stolen car report will never be on par with breaking up a domestic disturbance because the vehicle will remain just as stolen even if the investigation does not begin for a further two hours whereas the screaming and shoving match may turn into an assault with a deadly weapon if not broken up immediately. Likewise, putting officers on the still-hot trail of a rapist or drunk driver makes more sense than does sending those same officers to look into a "strange noises in my shed" situation — the one may get a danger to society off the streets before he harms anyone else, while the other would only a net a miscreant making off with a garden hoe. Our tale is a great story for telling, but not for taking as advice. Not unless one has a hankering to spend a night in the hoosegow, keeping the bedbugs company. Barbara "known by the company you keep" Mikkelson Last updated: 18 July 2007 Urban Legends Reference Pages © 1995-2008 by snopes.com. This material may not be reproduced without permission. snopes and the snopes.com logo are registered service marks of snopes.com.  Sources:
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