Old Men are Smart and Dangerous!

[zeezee]

George Phillips, an elderly man, from Meridian, Mississippi,was going up to bed, when his wife told him that he'd left the light on in the garden shed, which she could see from the bedroom window. George opened the back door to go turn off the light, but saw that there were people in the shed stealing things.

He phoned the police, who asked "Is someone in your house?"

He said "No," but some people are breaking into my garden shed and stealing from me.

Then the police dispatcher said "All patrols are busy. You should lock yourdoors and an officer will be along when one is available."

George said, "Okay.

He hung up the phone and counted to 30. Then he phoned the police again.

"Hello, I just called you a few seconds ago because there were people stealing things from my shed... Well, you don't have to worry about them now because I just shot and killed them both, the dogs are eating them right now." and he hung up.

Within five minutes, six Police Cars, a SWAT Team, a Helicopter, two Fire Trucks, a Paramedic, and an Ambulance showed up at the Phillips' residence, and caught the burglars red-handed.

One of the Policemen said to George, "I thought you said that you'd shot them!"

George said, "I thought you said there was nobody available!"



Gunslinger's Journal: Old Men are Smart and Dangerous!

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[MrNiceGuy]

Chock full of win.

 

[Cougfan2]

Funny how that happens. I don't know it that story is true, but if it isn't, it ought to be.

Had a real ***hat living two doors over from me several years ago. Without going into all the sordid details, I'd had to call the cops more than once on this drunken yahoo. One night when he was standing on the sidewalk in front of my house screaming at me to come out and fight I called the cops and asked them to come deal with this guy. Same kind of answer. I told them that was no problem; he was threatening me and I was armed so I would just deal with it myself. I opened the front door just long enough to say the police were on the way and went back inside. They were there in two minutes. His landlord evicted him about 6 mos later.

 

[SheepDog223]

a Paramedic, and an Ambulance? Is there a link to a news article or is this just a funny?

 

[zeezee]

How the heck you would ever prove this to be true isn't something I care to address, take it for what it is but here is the link, knock your self out.

Gunslinger's Journal: Old Men are Smart and Dangerous!

 

[SheepDog223]

Yeah, I looked at the link. I presume that if the story has some truth, it has been"evolved" to bring out an enhanced sense of poetic justice.

Also NWFA rules do say something about making sure that what you post is true to the best of your knowledge.

 

[MrNiceGuy]

Also NWFA rules do say something about making sure that what you post is true to the best of your knowledge.

Do you really have to be the person who starts bickering about the validity of an anecdotal story?
Do you really believe that rule applies to things like this?
Sad.


Anywho, here's what snopes has to say about this story:
snopes.com: Response Time

Although the familiar version of this story might be a bit of fiction, could something like it have happened anyway? Since we penned this article in April 2002, a few real-life incidents matching the basic elements of the tale have taken place:


In September 2003 a minister in Odessa, Texas, who felt police were not responding quickly enough to his call about a burgled church 40 minutes later followed up with a second phone call in which he reported he was holding hostages and threatening to kill them at that location. The three police officers who were pulled off other cases to converge on the hostage call were not amused by the ruse, and arrested its perpetrator, Paul Weymouth, the 63-year-old pastor of Heights Christian Church, on charges of filing a false report.


In November 2009, an East Texas man called 911 to report that he'd just committed a murder and was still armed. Several officers from the Tyler, Texas, police force sped to his address in cars with emergency lights and sirens blaring, only to find that the 911 dispatch had been a ruse: the caller had been assaulted earlier in the day and wanted to file a complaint, so he'd fabricated his claim about killing someone in order to prompt a quicker response from police. Officers took Mark Anthony Johnson into custody on charges of filing a false report.



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 another 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 might only net a miscreant making off with a garden hoe.

Moreover, the caller who falsely reports that he is armed and has shot people not only risks the safety of responding police officers, but his own as well:
Tyler Police Department Public Information Officer Don Martin said the incident could have proved deadly because officers rushing to the scene could have had an accident or the suspect could have been injured by officers responding to what they believed was a scene with a shooter.

"During a call like that they're all in the frame of mind they have an active shooter who has killed someone. They don't know what the person is thinking or what might happen," he said.
This tale might be 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.