A Prank Turns Deadly

[Rageaholic]

And here's another hitch in the situation. A fair number of police numbers that are listed as the full area code+number non-emergency number are answered by the emergency 911 center.

So now you're calling about a non-emergency situation and you just reached the emergency 911 dispatcher. You have been drilled and have had it pounded into your head that bad and evil things happen if you call 911 and it is not an emergency and a number of people freak and mumble wrong number and hang up.

I at least was rattled but had the sense to say "I didn't call 911, I called the number if the book" to which they explained that this was the EMS dispatch center, emergency or otherwise and so I was able to report the drunk who was passed out on my porch.

So I can see the person being a little leery about getting involved. Some police officers take a dim view of you taking matters into your hands, others get pissed off if you call them for something that is not an emergency.

I made that mistake one time when I was on the road. The person in front of me just stopped for five minutes at a stop light. The light turned from green to red several times, but she remained immobile. I couldn't tell if she was knocked out or what, but it looked like she was just sitting there, staring into space. After several minutes of this, I called 911, telling them of the location. However, by that time, she must have woken up because she had driven off.

So I left, fearing retribution from the police after hearing these horror stories of what happens when you call for a false emergency. Yet at the same time, I didn't know what I was supposed to do. Sometimes you're just not prepared to know what to do. Especially if you're an already anxious person. All this litigation doesn't help matters. I'm just glad it wasn't a real emergency cause I don't know how I'd react.

[Skelly]

Give them the needle.

[Akasa]

In my state if I want to call the police out to do something I HAVE to call 911.

[Mongo Skruddgemire]

Am I the only one who doesn't find the concept of something self-destructing in my hand all that funny?

No, odds are that you are not the only one. But then I wouldn't be targeting you unless I knew what you considered funny and whether or not I thought you'd be amused by the pranks.

The example with the pens and pencils self destructing was part of a prank of an co-worker that had left on a two week vacation to Europe and was bragging about it (and rubbing it in a little).

We sabotaged his office...hard. Pens that fell apart when you pressed the clicker, Pencils that had the lead removed and placed back in so they break whenever you apply pressure on it (the pencils our office were crap and with a little gentle persuasion you could pull out the entire lead), we unscrewed the pulls on his desk drawers and stuck them back on with just enough glue to hold them together until he pulled on them, we pin-holed his light bulbs on his desk lamp so they had Oxygen contamination and would blow (can't do that anymore since you can't find an incandescent for love nor money), sabotaged his chair so when he sat down the arms fell off...

The list goes on. After an hour of it he finally gave up and called us to fix everything. We replaced his pens and pencils with the ones he had left in his holder, put the screws back in his drawer pulls and chair arms, replaced his lamp bulbs...everything was set back to normal within 15 minutes.

Now you may not think that's funny. But if I knew that you didn't appreciate that sort of humor, I wouldn't have done that to you. He thought it was funny since he later came out to us and admitted that with everything breaking off in his hand he was afraid to go to the bathroom to piss out the coffee for fear of breaking "that" off as well.

A side note, we did NOT touch his coffee mug or his chair other than the arm rests. It's one thing to have a pen fall apart or a bulb flare and go "fitz!", but a breaking mug and a collapsing chair could have gotten someone hurt.

He was also the type to pull pranks on us like linking all our paperclips together or crazy-gluing the caps of the white out so we couldn't open them. So he was fair game.

You would not be the target of that sort of prank unless I knew you well enough to know whether or not you'd appreciate that level of joke. I'd either have selected something else or not have bothered if I couldn't read your level of humor. Pranks with me and my friends are meant to be fun.

Not malicious.

[Mongo Skruddgemire]

Give them the needle.

The problem with going for a death penalty conviction is that you have to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that there was intent to kill and that the defendant(s) were the one(s) that committed the crime.

When the prosecution gets overzealous, they lose the case and far too often the person doesn't get any punishment for the crime.

Casey Anthony is a good example. Play it up like a complete dick-bag that is extremely guilty, then when they try to fry you, you drop a bombshell like "I found my baby drowned in a pool and I panicked and did stupid things"

Now there is reasonable doubt, there is no way to prove cause of death, and now the prosecution who was going all out for maximum penalty, loses the case.

Try going to lethal injection those kids and you can't prove the intent. After all they didn't plan on anyone dying, at best you can prove Criminally Negligent Homicide or Manslaughter. Neither of which is a capital crime.

As much as some of us would like to see them meet their maker and let him/her/it deal with them, I would rather not see them walk because some idjit lawyer wanted another notch in his belt.