A nearby Snorlax
Sorry we missed your call, we were busy playing Pokémon.
Two Los Angeles police officers were fired for chasing Pokémon rather than fleeing robbers, court documents show.
So the robbers caught them?
No no don’t be silly, the BBC means they were chasing Pokémon rather than chasing fleeing robbers.
The pair were parked nearby when a radio call came in for officers to respond to a shop robbery.
But a review of their in-car camera footage showed they had been playing Pokémon Go and chose to pursue a nearby Snorlax – a relatively rare catch – instead of providing back-up.
Air Traffic Control to pilot: I wish I could deal with your questions but I can’t right now, there’s a Snorlax down the block.
When will people start to realize that police officers are not always (or even often) brave heroes? That they are ordinary humans who are given too much power over other ordinary humans, and have too little accountability? Police reform is vitally needed, and accountability is needed.
Those of us who teach are constantly bashed in the face with “accountability”. Prove you are succeeding. Prove you are working. Prove you deserve your paycheck. And asked to prove it using tests that prove nothing of the sort, and vilified as people wasting taxpayer money.
How much more should that be true for people who carry guns and a badge? People with intense amounts of power, and often shitty personalities to go with it? Most of the police I have known personally tend to be very much autocrats, drunk on power.
Lemme guess, their surnames were Nobbs and Colon?
Personally, I think that police officers chasing Pokémon rather than burglars is downright adorable. Here in the US, our police officers beat their wives and kill unarmed black people.
As the smoke rises upward, though envious haters may tell you otherwise, Los Angeles really is in the United States.
Seriously, that shit is like trans suicide rates, it’s a myth. Police do not shoot all that many unarmed black people (or anyone really). The problem is that when they do they are less likely to be accountable for it. That myth is really unhelpful to getting anything meaningful done as far as police reform goes and it scares people unnecessarily.
@Lady Mondegreen:
I feel exceedingly foolish. I have no idea how or why I overlooked “Los Angeles” and mentally set this story in the UK, but that’s what happened. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Maybe it was the word “shop” – I think of shop as much more a UK word for places where you buy things, while “store” is the US version.