Two US cops fired after abandoning a robbery to play Pokemon Go
Two US police officers have been fired after they went off to chase virtual Pokemon creatures instead of responding to a robbery.
Eric Mitchell and Louis Lozano were cruising the streets searching for Pokemon in the augmented reality smartphone game, and abandoned their jobs in the process.
An in-car recording revealed that the pair heard the call for help during a robbery at a Los Angeles department store, and decided to drive away.
“Officer Mitchell alerted Lozano that ‘Snorlax’ ‘just popped up’,” legal documents show.
“For approximately the next 20 minutes, the (recording) captured petitioners discussing Pokemon as they drove to different locations where the virtual creatures apparently appeared on their mobile phones.”
The officers caught the virtual Snorlax before turning their attention to a much harder creature to conquer.
“Holy crap, man. This thing is fighting the crap out of me,” Mitchell said of the Pokemon, according to the documents, which were published last week.
Both officers were charged with multiple counts of misconduct, and admitted to failing to respond to the robbery, but denied they had been playing Pokemon Go.
The smartphone game took the world by storm in 2016, with users searching for fantastical creatures using the real world through their smartphone screens.
Despite challenging the court’s ruling and upholding the notion they were not playing the game at the time of the robbery, both men were charged and fired from their jobs with the Los Angeles Police Department.
Image credits: Getty Images