Showdown Between LAPD, ‘Call of Duty’ Statue Ends in Stalemate
August 23rd, 2013
Video game developers are often victimized by anonymous death threats. Though these threats are rarely acted upon, one could understand why video game companies might choose to step up their office security measures after tasteless fans go overboard with extreme rhetoric while expressing opinions about new titles from beloved franchises. Back in May of this year, indie game studio Robotoki, run by Call of Duty developer Robert Bowling, installed a panic button to use in the event of an armed intruder.
The following day, one of Bowling’s employees pushed the panic button out of curiosity at the end of the work day and then left for home, leaving Bowling alone in the studio. LAPD officers swiftly responded in SWAT style, rushing Bowling from the building, and then, after mistaking his life-sized Call of Duty mannequin for an active shooter, set about a tense standoff, nearly opening fire on a replica of the character Simon “Ghost” Riley. Ultimately, officers realized that they were facing off with an inanimate statue before squeezing their triggers, differentiating this call from the Christopher Dorner manhunt in which paranoid officers shot two women in a case of mistaken identity.
It’s Always Funny Until Someone Gets Hurt
Officers emerged from the building chuckling after realizing that they had been in a heart-pounding standoff with a lifeless statue. Afterwards, police stayed to chit chat with Bowling and played a round of Nintendo games on the taxpayers’ dime. Bowling’s studio was not fined for the false alarm.
In this situation, the SWAT-style response did have a pretty comical outcome, and everyone got to go home to their families. However, that is not always the case. SWAT teams often invade wrong addresses in pursuit of suspects accused of crimes related to the misguided War on Drugs, leading to tragic outcomes, such as the time Tennessee police killed 62-year-old John Adams in a raid on the wrong house. These tragic errors are beginning to happen more and more, as police departments have been transitioning away from traditional police tactics and towards the military-style rules of engagement that soldiers use while occupying foreign nations.
Police Encounters Are Dangerous
The Cato Institute notes that you are eight times more likely to be killed by a police officer than a terrorist. This has a lot to do with the nature of police encounters. Law enforcers typically respond to dangerous situations and have a quite natural tendency to presume the worst in scenarios that may jeopardize their lives.
When police kick in someone’s door in the middle of the night, particularly at a wrong address, any law abiding citizen who responds to such an invasion, also quite rationally, by grabbing a home defense weapon, is likely to meet a hail of bullets. Sadly, these bureaucratic errors put citizens and officers in unnecessary danger. Often, these SWAT-style raids are performed on individuals who were accused of non-violent, victimless crimes, rendering an armed response unnecessary.
Luckily, nothing like that happened in this case. Everyone got to go home and laugh about it in the end.
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