Cops: Call off the pranks

Fires that haven’t been lit. Fights where a punch wasn’t even thrown. A riot in a bus stand that never existed.Child pranksters are going crazy in Barbados during this summer recess, and it is driving the Royal Barbados Police Force round the bend.According to Sergeant Seibert Johnson of the RBPF’s Operations Division, the force has had to deal with between ten and 20 prank calls every day since schools went on summer vacation on June 24. The police are of the belief that most of those calls are made by unsupervised children who have time on their hands while home alone, and get up to mischief such as making the police send three patrol cars to a crime that hasn’t happened, fire tenders to a blaze that doesn’t exist, or ambulances to accidents that are just a figment of their adolescent imaginations.“Its a serious problem,” Sergeant Johnson told the WEEKEND NATION yesterday. “What these children don’t realise, if that when a call like this is made, the police have to respond. When there’s nothing happening, it’s a complete waste of police manpower and resources. On many occasions, ambulances are also brought out, and that could prove to be a more serious problem if they are needed elsewhere when they are at the scenes of prank calls,” Johnson added.He noted that in previous times, adults were the regular perpetrators of prank calls to the police, but in recent years children have been the main culprits. “Over the last few years, we have noticed the prank calls by children have increased dramatically, and those calls always increase during the long summer vacation period,” the veteran cop told the WEEKEND NATION.Johnson said that the Force recorded all calls made to their offices, and were very aware of where the calls originated. The cop noted that basic analysis showed most of the calls were made between 8 a.m. and 4.30 p.m., when most parents in Barbados were at work, and kids were left without supervision.“What the Force is trying to do, is to inform the parents of these children how to educate them about not wasting the time of the departments and emergency services which can save lives, and are extremely important to the country when properly utilised.“Some of them are made from phone booths as well. Just yesterday we had one such call where we were informed a Tabernacle Church was on fire. When we got there with a number of patrol vehicles, there was no fire. It was a waste of this country’s emergency services,” the sergeant concluded.Johnson said the pranksters were in breach of the law, but not much could be done from a prosecutorial perspective. “What these children don’t realise, is that wasteful use of police time is against the law, and an offence. We’ve been forced in recent times to contact the adults in such homes and urge them to have serious conversations with their children,” Johnson added.He noted that in recent years, prank bomb threats had decreased, but the Force was still dealing with some,  usually involving Government offices and buildings.