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posted by martyb on Sunday September 24 2017, @10:49PM   Printer-friendly
from the headless-horse[less]man dept.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41355592

A local US police department has urged people not to call 911 after reports that a man had been crushed by a garage door.

The supposed victim in Greene County, Tennessee, turned out to be a scarily realistic, early Halloween decoration. The department said it had received calls about a "suspicious person lying in a driveway with bloody handprints on the garage". Officers investigated, only to find it was a puppet stuffed with straw.

Greene County TN Sheriff's Department wrote on Facebook: "ATTENTION EVERYONE!!! For those of you driving on Chuckey Pike in Greene County: THIS IS A HALLOWEEN DECORATION! Do NOT call 911 reporting a dead body. Instead, congratulate the homeowner on a great display."

[Okay, Soylentils, what is your best Halloween prank? --Ed.]


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  • (Score: 2) by frojack on Monday September 25 2017, @03:12AM (11 children)

    by frojack (1554) on Monday September 25 2017, @03:12AM (#572533) Journal

    Well, what else could he do? No actual crime was omitted, other than a public display of bad taste.
    What would you sentence that jerk to, a tongue-lashing from mom?

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  • (Score: 2) by frojack on Monday September 25 2017, @03:14AM

    by frojack (1554) on Monday September 25 2017, @03:14AM (#572535) Journal

    I meant Omitted, not committed. Oh, hell leave it that way, it reads ok that way too.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 25 2017, @04:15AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 25 2017, @04:15AM (#572544)

    Relatedly, how did the clowns from that moral panic fare last year?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 25 2017, @04:30AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 25 2017, @04:30AM (#572545)

      Maybe it was just viral marketing for that movie.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 25 2017, @06:43AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 25 2017, @06:43AM (#572565)

        Or that campaign.

    • (Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Monday September 25 2017, @06:20PM

      by Osamabobama (5842) on Monday September 25 2017, @06:20PM (#572736)

      When is the next Moral Panic Fair, by the way? Should be October, right?

      Oh, I must have misread that...

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 25 2017, @06:45AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 25 2017, @06:45AM (#572568)

    He could say "This is not okay™" and then monologued about the relationship between cultural appropriation and the triggering of college students with internet PTSD.

  • (Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 25 2017, @07:51AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 25 2017, @07:51AM (#572581)

    Here's an example that happened over here in Denmark:

    Back when the old MIR space station was scheduled to fall into the ocean, some pranksters wrote "MIR" in permanent marker on some pieces of an old xerox machine and dumped them in the front yard of some elderly couple. The elderly couple, having heard the news about the falling space station, panicked and called the police, telling them that a piece of MIR had landed in their front yard.

    The responsible thing to do would have been to send out a patrol car to check, with an officer who knows how stuff tends to look after heating to several thousand degrees during atmospheric reentry (i.e. melted, charred black).

    Instead the police called up the military, and they - trusting the police to do their work - sent out an entire hazmat unit from a base several hours away. The whole operation cost a ton of money, just to have the hazmat guys figure out that someone dumped a few pieces of an old xerox machine.

    In the end they threatened to bill the pranksters - though they didn't know who they were, so nothing came of that - rather than reprimanding the police for calling in military support without spending ten minutes to check the facts.

  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Monday September 25 2017, @12:00PM (2 children)

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday September 25 2017, @12:00PM (#572618)

    Zoning violation? This comes up occasionally where I live, mostly WRT people leaving their christmas stuff up until Valentines Day or so. At least where I live there's the excuse that you hung that junk up on a snowless windless 40 degree november day, and after christmas its like -10 and a foot of snow until melting time traditionally around Valentines Day, so people are like "F it" they'll wait till the snow melts.

    Okay, Soylentils, what is your best Halloween prank?

    My best build (no involvement from zoning commission BTW) was a giant as hell PVC pipe and leaf bag (are giant leaf bags still a thing?) spider on my roof. I also mounted two light sockets with red light bulbs and that was pretty cool until the first rain and I got paranoid about plugging it in with it either being wet or water damaged. Despite black paint the accumulated UV exposure was shattering legs. Overall the build was kinda a failure, I spent money on threaded PVC adapters so I could reuse it but UV or whatever was shattering the painted legs. Yet it did look cool for a year. The mechanical design was based two ropes and two partially filled sandbags hanging down the other side of the roof to balance, also I cheated and the main pipe manifold for the legs was tie straps and a small "precision drilled" plywood board. PVC in those lengths is "floppy" and I worried about that but it made the legs look more real, maybe, or maybe it just helped fatigue failure set in. I had a few people stop and take pictures of my giant roof spider with glowing eyes, but I did not make the news. I wouldn't do it again but I would suggest doing it once. Hollywood is infinitely uncreative and sooner or later they'll redo "Leiningen and the Ants" and putting a couple car size ants on my house roof would be kind cool...

    Halloween is more of a carpenters holiday anyway. With some scrap plywood and my table saw I could turn out at least a couple prop-grade coffins per hour, for example, stakes thru the heart of vampires, wood fake tombstones, simple plywood monster cutouts nicely painted, etc.

    Someday we'll have a shitty Hollywood remake of Dune, and I'm trying to figure out the best tech to make a decorative sandworm, aside from genetic modification to make a real sandworm, obviously. Canvas over stud grade 2x4 wood and lots of paint?

    • (Score: 2) by krishnoid on Monday September 25 2017, @08:40PM (1 child)

      by krishnoid (1156) on Monday September 25 2017, @08:40PM (#572786)

      Nah, just some cloth and a sewing machine [instructables.com] or some basic baking supplies [kitchenoverlord.com].

      • (Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday September 26 2017, @12:01PM

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday September 26 2017, @12:01PM (#573052)

        SPICE FILLING:

        2 tbsp garam masala (or pumpkin pie spice, or Chinese five spice powder, as preferred in your sietch)

        Disappointing, I expected something more spice-like, perhaps psychoactive weed.

  • (Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday September 25 2017, @09:56PM

    by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Monday September 25 2017, @09:56PM (#572813)

    Since when has that prevented Police form threatening action against people?

    Not committing a crime has no bearing on whether you will be punished. [forbes.com]