Police shoot gator, find out it's lawn ornament

Police responding to an alligator sighting in a suburban Kansas City pond took quick action to dispatch the big reptile.

It wasn't until after the second rifle shot bounced off the beast Sunday that the three Independence officers realized it was a concrete lawn ornament.

Independence police spokesman Tom Gentry says the department received a call from a man who said a gator had been spotted in the woods.

Gentry says the alligator was in the weeds near a tree by a pond and it looked real. An officer shot the gator twice in the head — per instructions from a conservation officer — before realizing it wasn't moving.

Gentry says the landowner told officers he put the fake gator there to keep children off his property.

http://www.kansascity.com/2011/06/02/2920682/police-shoot-gator-find-out-its.html

:D

As for the gator, the police were acting pursuant to Executive Order 15995, authorizing the use of deadly force against enemy reptiles.

Call the police here about a gator in the woods and they'd say "so what?" They certainly wouldn't think it was worth going out to shoot.

this story is even funnier.

years ago and a cop car pulled up with the passenger side all stove in. It didn't look like the results of an ordinary wreck, so I asked the cop what happened to his cruiser and he said the guy on the last shift got a call about a big alligator in someone's driveway. The guy apparently tried to use the car to gently nudge and persuade the gator to go back into the bay where it belonged. The gator was having none of it and whacked the side of the cruiser with its tail.

They might not even show up if it's blocking the door into work because "it's not big enough". 4 feet long apparently isn't.

The police or wildlife officers never came. Eventually it moved along but all traffic in/out was stopped until then.

an incident a few years back where a police officer or deputy was shooting at a snake and hit a
child some distance away, killing the child.

sometimes I think they don't bother to check people for functioning brains before hire. Ooooh a gator, get the rifle Jimbob we is gonna dispatch that thar' reptile.

I wonder if the morons looked around to make sure there weren't any other houses nearby? We had the cops shoot an injured but mobile deer near here last year and the bullet made its way into a shed behind a house just through the trees.

You know, when you're a rookie, they can teach you everything about bein' a cop except how to live with a mistake.

According to Wikipedia, NO, the furthest north for Alligators is southern Arkansas and maybe the south eastern tip of Oklahoma.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_alligator
http://www.defenders.org/wildlife_and_habitat/wildlife/alligator.php

While the range of Alligators is expanding do to Global Warming, no one is reporting them further north then the southern tip of Arkansas along the Red River at the present time (Thus the report Alligators MAY be in the Southern Eastern Tip of Oklahoma, also along the Red River).

Maybe the cops should know a bit more about the neighborhoods that they patrol.

Yeah, that's it ... to find out about the neighborhoods. Highly proactive police work. :eyes:

maybe if they would have thrown a donut at the gator, they could have figured out it wasn't real

I know, I'm kidding, but I got you didn't I?

sad statement on the country we live in.

A mama and two babies...had them out in front of the house near the road. I had made them myself and was pretty proud of my work.


Anyway, I went out to get the mail a day or two after Mr P put them up and discovered something horrible.

Someone had SHOT the mama lawn bear!!!!!

I was in tears...showed Mr P where "some dirty fucker shot my lawn bear".

He started laughing his ass off.

Turned out it was a hole he accidentally made while attaching it to the wooden stakes in back holding it up.

sigh....

:rofl:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiqSfMFSoPw

One brave cat...

I keed.

Arming all citizens is the only wise thing to do.

That landowner doesn't know much about children. A fake gator will almost guarantee that children will trespass on his property.

Within an hour after kid zero first sees this alligator in the woods, EVERY kid in the area knows about it. Hell, that would have happened when I was a kid, long before there was such a thing as cell phones, e-mail and facebook. Some parent would quickly get wind of it and call the cops, who would investigate (if they're in a place where alligators aren't normally found in the woods, of course.) Once the cops determine it's not real, they tell the parent who called them out, the parent tells their kid, and within another hour every kid in the area knows it's fake.

mikey_the_rat

It doesn't sound like anyone other than the police was actually at the site - to identify the 'gator' or to assess the risk...

About a week or two ago. Except someone thought they saw a tiger. Turned out it a a large stuffed toy tiger.

that alligators can't survive in the climate of Kansas City.

And these people are ARMED.....

Does one laugh or cry at this kind of baldfaced idiocy.

I flew a couple of times last year and found this while reading the in-flight magazine SkyMall



http://www.skymall.com/shopping/detail.htm?pid=102876212&c=10519

Imagine if you could arrange "Zombie of Montclaire Moors" and the alligator lawn ornament in such a way that it looked like the gator was munching on the zombie! }(

That'll have the police out, for sure!

pipi_k's bears from upthread and I am sure a splendid time would be had by all passersby. Gotta love the zombie-bear wars.

About 2AM, when the Bars closed, an inebriated patron took a shortcut past my resting place. As he began to pass me, I sat up. I could hear him screaming for minutes afterwords. It was precious.

Wouldn't it be fun to track the guy down and get him to tell you his version of the story? (You wouldn't tell him it was you, of course, he may kill you for turning his hair white or something!) You have to wonder does he believe he really saw a ghost or whatever, or did he write it off in his mind as a drunken hallucination, or a dream, or did he black it out altogether.

I'm attending a goodbye party for a work colleague that afternoon. I'll check the schedule to see if it might be possible to attend the rally as well.

:hi:

I'll PM you the details.

Though before seeing where this occurred, I would've sworn it happened in Florida.

Please?

Rawr! (cat scratch motions in the air)

PB

Here in Canada, they committed 31 of the 97 murders we had in 2010.

out into the darkness? I'm calling that a 'win' for good police work!

Even if it had been real I'm not sure why they'd be so quick to shoot it, however... :shrug:

where are they recruiting cops from these days? Cause many don't seem to be too smart.