A 30-man armed SWAT team stormed a school in Illinois after a staff member accidentally called his wife from his pocket, causing her to believe that he was being held hostage. Officers…wearing riot gear and carrying automatic weapons searched Carlton Washburne School, Winnetka, for almost three hours after the woman, who has not been identified, called 911.
Joseph De Lopez, the local police chief, said the woman reported receiving a call from her husband in which she could hear muffled voices and believed he was being held captive by a man with a gun…
But while they were still searching the school, and the man’s distressed wife remained connected to his mobile phone and to 911, he returned home.
While driving back from work, he had called his wife by sitting on his mobile phone, which was in his back pocket, while he listened to hip-hop and talked to himself.
“His wife was the last number he’d dialled,” Chief De Lopez said.
Mark Friedman, the school district interim co-superintendent, explained that the music’s “gangster-like” lyrics had contributed to the woman’s concerns.
The police chief felt it still was a great training exercise. Let’s run him for Congress.
If you hear something…call SWAT!
The police need to be re-trained
How is it that no-one was tased?
How is it that he was able to leave the school while it was being searched by police in SWAT gear? (and presumably singing “Kill the po-lice, kill the po-lice…”).
Butt-dialed my mother once.Seventy eight years old and I woke her up at 3 am. Bought a butt-dial immune phone the next day.
SWAT – Keystone Kops Division !!!
That’s it. We need to pass a constitutional amendment that bans all “hip” and/or “hop” music. It has no value in our society and causes nothing but problems.
A few articles with the phrases “Think of the children” and “The terrorists will win” should get the ball rolling.
Someone immediately thinks the worst when faced with an unknown, whereas a little common sense would have solved it effortlessly. I think all this mass hysteria over terrorism is working up the average citizen into an unwarranted frenzy.
When you are afraid, reason and common-sense take a back-seat. Janet Napolitano somehow thinks enticing us to all keep a watch out on our fellows citizens will work better in this frenzied environmental state-of mind. It would be hilarious if it weren’t so tragic.
Talk about paranoid. That’s the first thing she thought of was someone has taken hostages at her husband school?
Nothing like good old American paranoia for a good news story.
I’m with #2.
Nobody tazed anybody?
WTF is wrong with the cops out there in flyover land?
What’s the point if nobody died?
In NYC we don’t bother the cops unless there’s at least a body on the street.
Bang ‘er up! The dozy mare
well thankfully he didnt fart or she would have said she heard shots fired!!! no telling what that swat team woulda done then.
hmmm. and all these years I thought they were
PUSH BUTTONS
– but nope, they’re –
BUTT PUSHONS
At last a police chief who can shrug and say, “It was just a mistake but no harm no foul. The boys needed the practice anyway.”