Hoax Museum Blog: Law/Police/Crime

Ass-Kicking Sheriff — Kristen sent in this picture of a Kern County police car bearing a decal with the motto, "We'll Kick Your Ass... And take your doughnuts too." The picture is doing the email rounds (it's been doing them for about a year) accompanied by a caption that explains:
Kern County California police drove this car for 1 week before an officer noticed what the graphics company employee did on the passenger side of the car. The employee did this on his last day working for the graphics company before he retired.
The picture is actually real (i.e. it's not photoshopped), but the caption explaining it is incorrect, which is a pity because the real story is better than the phony story. The decals weren't created by a mischievous graphics company employee. They were created by the Kern County police themselves as an in-house joke. This all happened last year (2003). Of course, when the picture of the squad car began circulating via email, it soon found its way to a local newspaper, the editor of which called up the Sheriff to ask him what it was all about. The Sheriff at first denied all knowledge of it, saying it was a doctored photo, but later the truth leaked out: a Kern County police Commander had ordered the decals made. All the details of the story can be found in this KGET News article. Of course, it didn't take long for someone to start selling 'We'll Kick Your Ass' merchandise on cafepress. Or, if your dog's birthday is coming up, you can get him a 'We'll Bite Your Ass' t-shirt.

Citizens for a Murder-Free America — This is an old site, but I hadn't seen it before. It pretends to be the homepage of a lobbying group called 'Citizens for a Murder-Free America' who are campaigning for passage of 'Precrime' legislation that will help stop murders before they happen. In reality, the site is part of the publicity campaign for Steven Spielberg's movie Minority Report, which was about a future society where the police use psychics to see into the future and tell them about murders before they happen (based on a Philip K. Dick short story). It was a pretty good movie.

Fake Cop with Guard Sheep — I've heard of plenty of cases of people pretending to be cops, but this one takes the cake. It's the line about how "the bogus policeman used to patrol at night in company of a sheep that looks like a dog" that really boggles my mind. I'm trying to visualize a sheep that could pass for a dog, but my imagination just isn't good enough.

Fake Road Rage Takes Turn for the Worse — If you break down by the side of the road, what should you do? Use your cellphone to call for help, of course. Or, if you're a complete idiot, you can pretend that you and your buddy are fighting so that concerned motorists will call the police for you. A group of budding geniuses in Massachusetts chose option B, and soon ended up in jail after a policeman showed up and ordered them to the ground at gunpoint.

Horse and Hound Humor — According to Horse & Hound magazine, British health authorities have decided to make it the law that all children must wear face masks and rubber gloves while doing yard work or grooming horses. Health and Safety spokeswoman Lirap Ducek is quoted as saying, "Childhood asthma has increased three-fold in the last 10 years, and we want to ensure that children are protected against picking up bugs which can have long-term health implications." But before you send your kid out in a rubber mask, you might want to check the release date on that story: April 1. That's right, it was an April Fool's Day joke. But apparently hundreds of people in England fell for it.

Don Fulci, Terrorist Mastermind — According to US News, one day last April the FBI, acting on a tip from an informant, went on alert to track down an evil reclusive millionaire terrorist mastermind named Don Emilio Fulci who was planning chemical attacks against London and Washington DC. FBI Director Mueller was even informed about the threat that Fulci posed. Only later did someone in the White House realize that Don Fulci is the name of the crime boss in a video game named Headhunter. I wonder if that day in April happened to be April 1st? (via BoingBoing)

Fake Abductions More Common Than Most People Realize — The abduction of Audrey Seiler, and subsequent revelation that she had faked the abduction herself, has been generating a lot of media attention. But in an interview with the Newhouse News Service, Ben Radford, managing editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine, points out that cases like this are far more common than most people realize. By his estimate, they occur about three of four times a month, but most of the cases slip under the media's radar. In the early stages of the Seiler case, when she was first found, Ben actually emailed me betting me $10 that the case would turn out to be a hoax. Luckily, I didn't take that bet.

Restaurant Strip-Search Hoax — According to the Wall Street Journal a strange prank is becoming a real problem for restaurants throughout America. A phone prankster calls up a restaurant, pretending to a police officer, and asks the manager of the restaurant to strip search the store's employees. The reason given is usually that the police are searching for stolen money or drugs. And time after time the store managers comply with the request. I've seen cases of this prank reported in the news before, and I assumed they were unrelated to each other. But police suspect that all the cases might be the work of one guy, operating out of North Florida. Tom Briggs, of the National Food Service Security Council, notes that "Whoever this caller is must be a hell of a good con man... You'd think nobody would fall for this." Numerous restaurant chains have fallen victim to the prank, including Burger King, Wendy's, and Applebee's.

Push Button for Walk Signal — I've long suspected that those buttons on corners that you're supposed to push to get a walk signal are a bizarre hoax. Just a facade created by city governments to let us pedestrians feel like we possess some small measure of control. Now this article (NY Times, reg. req.) largely confirms my suspicion. The article only discusses New York City, but I think the situation is the same throughout most of the country.

Fake Cop — If you're going to drive around in a car pretending to be a cop, for God's sake don't pull over a real cop.

Self Arrest Form — The East Point Police, in East Point, Georgia, have come up with a novel way to reduce the costs of fighting crime. They simply invite criminals to arrest themselves. They have an easy-to-use self arrest form on their website that criminals can fill out and submit online. At first I suspected that the entire East Point Police website was a joke, but this doesn't appear to be the case. Instead, I'm guessing that this self-arrest form is just a bit of police humor, in the same vein as the decision by the police in Kokomo, Indiana to cut costs by closing the police station during the night. Emergency calls would be recorded on an answering machine and answered the following morning.

No Joke. It’s a Robbery! — Here's an interesting situation. A robber walks into a store, waves a gun around, and tells the cashier to give him all the money in the register. The cashier takes one look at the gun, thinks it's plastic, and assumes the guy is joking. So she tells him to get lost. Frustrated, the would-be robber runs out of the store. But authorities now believe the robbery attempt was real, which makes the woman quite lucky. But there's still the possibility that the gun actually was a fake. After all, if the guy really did have a loaded gun, why didn't he fire a warning shot to let the cashier know he was serious?

Bone-Sniffing Dog — The Panama Truth Commission hoped to uncover the truth of what happened in that country during the reigns of the dictators Omar Torrijos and Manuel Noriega. So they brought in Sandra Anderson, a dog trainer whose bone-sniffing dog could help locate the bodies of the dead. But now there are fears that Anderson was a fraud who planted evidence when her dog couldn't find any.

Neck-Bomb Hoaxer — On August 28 a man with a bomb padlocked to his neck robbed a bank in Erie, Pennsylvania. The bomb blew up shortly thereafter, killing the man. The case got a lot of attention, so given human nature it shouldn't surprise anyone that neck-bomb copycat hoaxers are now popping up.

Bone Hoax — Crawford County police were alarmed when they discovered leg bones sticking out of a pair of work boots that were standing on the bank of Lake Shepherd Springs in Arkansas. They launched a massive investigation, until they realized the bones came from an animal. They warn that whoever is responsible for the hoax will be prosecuted for committing a crime.

Phone Prank — A prank caller phones a grocery story pretending to be the police. Somehow he convinces the store manager to start strip-searching customers.

Sultaana Freeman — The following email has been making the rounds. Someone asked me if it's real:
The Veil
By now you've heard of Sultaana Freeman. Sultaana is the Muslim convert
in Florida who is refusing to remove her veil for a driver's license
photo. So do you want to see what she looks like? Well here you go.
Sultaana with and without her veil!

Wait a minute! Doesn't that look like a mug shot on the left? Why, yes! I
think it is! I guess she was arrested! Well, as a matter of fact she was.
It happened in 1997 in Decatur, Illinois, which was after her conversion
to Islam. She was arrested for battering a foster child (religion of
peace, and all that). In 1999 she plead guilty to felony-aggravated
battery and was sentenced to 18 months probation.
By the way, since you've seen her face, you might as well know her real
name. It's Sandra Keller.
Ironic, isn't it? If Sandra/Sultaana had just gone along with the program
and allowed her face to be photographed it wouldn't now be plastered all
over the Internet. And so it goes.

Is this for real? Yes it is. Freeman's mugshot was dug up by The Smoking Gun (now owned by Court TV), which can always be counted on for digging up the dirt on people. Here's a story about it from the New York Daily News.

FBI chases fake terrorists — The FBI got fooled into thinking that 5 terrorists were on the loose around New Year's Eve.

Fake Ticker Tape Parade — Yesterday NYC staged a fake ticker tape parade. Bored firemen and policemen marched up and down the same block three times while, according to the NY Post, "drunken office workers shouting like morons to one another" dumped paper on their head. The whole exercise was supposed to persuade the Olympic committee to choose NYC as the site for the Olympics in 2012.

Fake Tourists Catch Cheats — From The Guardian, Prague police have declared war on cheating taxi-cab drivers by unleashing an army of fake tourists to flush out the cheats.