Swedish Police Raid Teenagers Playing Call of Duty

[Greg Tito]

Swedish Police Raid Teenagers Playing Call of Duty

No, it's not what you think.

You know, it's hard to remember that videogames have become incredibly life-like in recent years. For someone who may not be familiar with the technology of games - say for some octogenarians - the sounds of gunshots coming from a neighbor's apartment might be downright scary. Hearing gunfire and a man plead for help was frightening enough for a person in Stockholm to make a frantic call to the police this past Saturday. What they found was a bunch of kids playing videogames, without any real violence going on at all.

The cops took the emergency call very seriously, and raided the target apartment with a 10-member team. There's no word if they were dressed in assault gear or not, but given the call would have mentioned automatic weapons, I like to imagine the police in full Kevlar suits busting in on the unsuspecting teens. Mouths hanging open as the police point their own weapons at the group of kids sprawled on the couch, mouths wide open in surprise. A controller drops to the floor.

The youths were all escorted outside the abode and questioned, hopefully by a hard-nosed sergeant. After the stories all matched up - "We were in the middle of a match in Aftermath, and Bob had 12 kills." - the police admitted the mixup and released the kids with no arrests or charges filed.

Good thing they weren't playing Grand Theft Auto 4 or the police breaking in on them would have been too meta.

Source: UPI [http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2013/01/27/Police-called-to-apartment-over-video-game/UPI-69101359306540/#ixzz2JHSWNn4G]

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[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Really? But CoD guns sound like wood chippers.

I bet the guy just didn't appreciate all the noise coming from the apartment, and rather than having to deal with noisy neighbors over and over again he just reported gunshots. That should make them think twice before cranking up the volume again.

No, it's not what you think.

This is exactly what I thought it would be!

Yeah, so did I.

 

[Floppertje]

i recall a story that was exactly this to come out of scandinavia a year or two ago... do the police have nothing else to do there??

 

[Klaflefalumpf]

It was actually a pirated copy of Call of Duty at that, but this being Sweden...

 

[Therarchos]

To be fair most people from Scandinavia especially Denmark Norway and Sweden have no clue what an actual gunshot sounds like. So if the kids played it really noisy they might have misunderstood. Still stupid.

 

[SomeLameStuff]

I can say that it is really not that difficult to differentiate between real gunfire and game gunfire, but then again, I deal with guns on a daily basis (forced to, but whatever[stupid conscription]).

 

[WanderingFool]

Admittedly, its been awhile since I shot any guns, but Im almost pretty sure COD's gunfire sound bits dont sound anything like the real deal...

Still, pretty funny... and just to be clear, it is funny until it happens to you, than about an hour later when everythings cleared up, you'll then start laughing your ass off.

 

[Klaflefalumpf]

To be fair most people from Scandinavia especially Denmark Norway and Sweden have no clue what an actual gunshot sounds like. So if the kids played it really noisy they might have misunderstood. Still stupid.

They have National Service* on Norway though, so surely as a result most of the country have probably fired a gun at some point in training?

*At least that's the UK equivalent, not sure what the conventional term for it is.

 

[Therumancer]

Sounds to me like the police there need better training and higher standards. Not to mention policies where the police go after people who file false reports civilly if nothing else. To be honest I can't believe someone would mistake a video game for real violence... even grandparents, since the sound effects are QUITE differant. That leads me to believe a case like this is an intentionally false report intended as a phrank, or motivated by another reason (not liking the neighbor, too much noise, etc...).

If the neighbor insists they actually believed this they might need to be committed, because frankly if this causes them to lose track of reality the same thing could happen with a loud playing radio or TV.

Over a period of decades I've heard some interesting things about Swedish/Norweigian/Danish cops and really it paints a pretty unflattering picture, making me think it's easier to take a "Swedish Policewoman" in a porno more seriously than the real thing. I don't know how much the countries from this neck of the woods participate in international policing, but it occurs to me that the US, UK, etc... run programs to help train and educate policemen from all over the world through things like Interpol. I'm just saying... it hardly seems like this is the first time we've been looking at one of these police misfires, and while it happens to all countries, it isn't like you see much international news like "Swedish Police bust multi-billion dollar drug smuggling ring" once in a while to balance it out. It's not like you can say "well on the mean streets of Sweden, a bit of occasional overreaction happens, I mean look at all the other crap going on..."

 

[Therarchos]

To be fair most people from Scandinavia especially Denmark Norway and Sweden have no clue what an actual gunshot sounds like. So if the kids played it really noisy they might have misunderstood. Still stupid.

They have National Service* on Norway though, so surely as a result most of the country have probably fired a gun at some point in training?

*At least that's the UK equivalent, not sure what the conventional term for it is.

The thing is that even though every male has to go for an evaluation only a minority actually join up. In Denmark there is approximately 5,7 million people ( rough estimate might be 100.000 more or less) and only 4200 (again roughly) joins a year. Mostly volunteers. Only males are forced to go to the evaluation females have to volunteer. couldn't find the official statistic but even though I work proffesionally in the army the chances that a person I meet in the street has even been in the drafted service is roughly less than 1 in 10.

 

[rodneyy]

If the neighbor insists they actually believed this they might need to be committed, because frankly if this causes them to lose track of reality the same thing could happen with a loud playing radio or TV.

clearly you have never seen the ladykillers (the original) if the police dont check up on every one of these then the little old ladies can get away with a whole bank robbery worth of loot

 

[dontlooknow]

I bet the Activision marketing department are kicking themselves now - that'd make for a pretty sweet advertisement. (There's something wrong about the fact that Chrome autocorrects 'Activision' to 'vivisection.')

 

[juyunseen]

this is totally what I thought it would be.

I wonder if they can sue for damages to their K/D
/sarcasm

 

[Tiamat666]

Considering [a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Norway_attacks"]what happened in Norway[/a] one and a half years ago, it's no big surprise that Scandinavian law enforcement may be a little on the edge at the moment.

 

[Kirov Reporting]

I hope one of the officers was heard to remark..

"You call THAT a gun?"