The mobile game Pokemon GO, which was hugely popular between 2016 and 2019, was even instrumental in a robbery in the US. The incident, which was the subject of a recent lawsuit in California, occurred in 2017. Two los Angeles Police Department officers decided to go snorlax hunting in Pokemon GOinstead of preventing a robbery that came to their phone (and they were very close).
Pokemon GO Snorlax hunt prompts cops to sack
The officers involved are also accused of lying to police chiefs after they did not support the robbery operation. Two police chiefs, Louis Lozano and Eric Mitchell, said they could not hear the phone call because the park they were patrolling was a “very noisy environment.”
Believing in the police’s excuses at first, their chief then became suspicious and examined the digital video system in the police vehicles. This system, which records everything police do while they’re in their vehicle, turns out pokemon cops say they’re somewhere else, even though they’re close to the scene. Instead of preventing the robbery, Louis and Eric were seen going to catchSnorlax by turning to a “Pokemon Go Snorlax nearby” alert on their phone.
After five years of court proceedings, the court ordered the policemen to be fired.
