Man Armed Teen Nephew with Fake RPG and Sent Him to Test Terror Threat Preparedness of Local Police Department
A 39-year-old Phoenix man who organized a hoax terror threat in order to test police preparedness in the aftermath of July's Aurora movie theater massacre, was arrested this week and charged with multiple counts of not thinking his actions through.
About a week after the shooting in Colorado, Michael David Turley decided to see how long it would take local police to respond to a potentially lethal terror threat, and sent his 16-year-old nephew out into the streets dressed in typical terrorist garb and armed with a fake rocket-propelled grenade launcher.
Turley documented his experiment and uploaded the results to YouTube, where they were not very well received.
"Do you realize what would have happened if someone felt threatened by A MAN WALKING AROUND WITH AN RPG and shot the actor???" exclaimed one YouTuber, who is likely one of the dozens of users who clicked on the dislike button.
Phoenix Police were similarly unimpressed with Turley's prank, and came knocking on Monday with a list of offenses including "giving a false impression of a terrorist act, endangerment, contributing to the delinquency of a minor and misconduct involving a simulated explosive," according to Reuters.
Despite Turley's claim that it took police 15 minutes to arrive at the scene, the police say they were mobilized within three minutes of the first emergency call.
"We take something like this seriously," said unfortunately named Phoenix police spokesman James Holmes. "It wasn't fun and games to all the people who were affected by this. We don't behave like this in this country to prove a point."
