The Cellar - everything about this is so wrong

I was going to post this to vsp's surreal thread, but, I dunno, I will post here instead. I'm surprised this wasn't yet discussed, given its proximity to many cellarites.

About two weeks ago, police were called to a house in New Brunswick, NJ, where a girl had been allegedly raped by two armed men and was being held hostage. The stand-off lasted for some six hours, ending with two men - not arrested, but taken into custody because their accounts conflicted and did not necessarily suggest foul play.

Turns out it was all a <A HREF="http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/base/news-21/1111643709249840.xml">hoax</A> - the doing of a few people screwing around in an Internet chatroom. The house was in fact occupied by three people at the time: a father and his teenage son and daughter. Not sure why the stand-off lasted for six hours, but regardless, what a fucking waste of time for the police.

Reading follow-up stories, this incident is just all sorts of screwy. For starters:

Quote:

Fatin Ward, 23, of Texas, said she was playing a telephone game called "bombing," in which people make bogus emergency calls and then see how many law-enforcement officers respond.

For fun? Are people in today's society that mentally deficient to not realize the repercussions?

Quote:

Ward, a sex offender registered with Texas law-enforcement authorities, is listed on a state database as on probation for aggravated sexual assault on a 12-year-old boy in 2000.

Ward told a newspaper the boy, now about 16, is the father of her 4-year-old son.

Whoa, come again?

Other stories reveal that this woman has a whole mess of warrants issued against her for the exact same prank in several other cities. How dumb can you be? Anyway, today's rant about MIA (morons in America).

Quote:

911 HOAXER'S 'GAME' IS UP

March 25, 2005 -- A Texas woman - who admitted she started the six-hour standoff between police and purported hostage-takers in New Brunswick, N.J., by phoning in a fake emergency call - was arrested yesterday and charged with conspiracy and other offenses.

Fatin Ward, 23, of Texas, said she was playing a telephone game called "bombing," in which people make bogus emergency calls and then see how many law-enforcement officers respond.

Her mother said Ward has a history of mental illness, and has been refusing to take medication.

"I didn't mean to cause any trouble," Ward said in a telephone interview yesterday. "It got out of control."

The Middlesex County prosecutor's office signed criminal complaints against Ward and an alleged accomplice, Wadu Jackson, 20, of Irvington, charging them with conspiracy, initiating a false public alarm, and making a fictitious report to police.

Ward was arrested at her home at about noon, said Christy Gilfour, spokeswoman for Arlington, Texas, police. A registered sex offender in Texas, she had been charged in Arlington on Feb. 18 with failing to notify police of her new address.

A month later, after the Union, N.J. police department said Ward was making prank calls to them, Texas authorities moved to revoke her bail because she was continuing to commit crimes, Gilfour said. It was that bond revocation order on which she was arrested yesterday.

The Middlesex prosecutor's office asked police in Arlington, Texas, to extradite Ward to New Jersey.

Jackson was still being sought yesterday.

Ward, a sex offender registered with Texas law-enforcement authorities, is listed on a state database as on probation for aggravated sexual assault on a 12-year-old boy in 2000.

Ward told a newspaper the boy, now about 16, is the father of her 4-year-old son.

Ward is not employed; she receives a monthly disability check for her bipolar disorder, her mother said.

She is suspected of pulling similar pranks in other New Jersey and Pennsylvania, according to police.

On Jan. 5, Feb. 1 and Feb. 15, a woman believed to be Ward called police in Union reporting various emergency situations including shootings and stabbings, but each turned out to be a hoax, police said.

A similar call to Belleville on Jan. 17 sent a SWAT team scrambling to a house where a man and his mother were calmly watching TV.

And police in Palmer, Pa., say Ward was responsible for a standoff stemming from a bogus call on Feb. 20 that cost his department between $5,000 and $7,000 in response costs.