Results tagged “prankcalls”

After finding himself starved for conversation, a Suffolk County man went on to make nearly 300 fake 911 calls, ranging from claims of car accidents to murders. The perp used a falsetto voice and pretended to be a woman— and more than once he identified himself as THE Christopher Columbus.

A 20-year-old in Park Slope was picked up by police and arrested for making a false report after placing four prank calls to 911 last week. What was the hilarious line that he was trying to get cops to believe? That one of their fellow officers had been shot in the head, even giving the badge number of the "wounded" officer. Police would go to each of the locations where the supposed shootings was, only to find nothing, and contact the officer, who was all right. Investigators ultimately recognized the voice of Daquan Gardner, who was arrested for a similar call in 2007. Just two weeks ago, Gardner had been arrested for smoking marijuana at Sixth Avenue and Fourth Street, the same area he was placing the calls from on a street pay phone. An investigator told the Post, "He got locked up, he was mad at the police and he was trying to cause trouble." One of the calls last week was placed just hours before Officer Omar Edwards was fatally shot in East Harlem.

After initially being charged with reckless endangerment as a hate crime, a Staten Island man will only face misdemeanor charges for calling 911 last week with multiple false claims of attacking Mexicans. 44-year-old Michael Franklin was arrested after calling 911 on 5 separate occasions and saying things such as that he "killed two Mexicans and will kill more," that he "is riding around all day looking for more Mexicans" and that he "just hit a Mexican in the head with a baseball bat and threw him in the weeds." A spokesman for the DA's office says that the original hate crime charges were downgraded because the calls don't fall under the state's list of specified offenses for a hate crime. Franklin's only charges now will be for third-degree falsely reporting an incident and second-degree obstruction of governmental administration. After being arrested, he allegedly told police, "I'm an American citizen. The Mexicans are here illegally. They get work. I don't get work."

The NYPD's Internal Affairs Bureau is investigating allegations that just hours after the not guilty verdict was issued in the Sean Bell shooting trial, a number of crank calls were made to the home of Nicole Paultre Bell's parents by someone connected to a police union. The calls were both hang-ups or someone laughing--"Ha ha ha"--on the other end of the line.