Two police officers in Los Angeles lost their jobs because of a video game. They were found playing Pokémon GO on duty and did not respond to a senior regarding an ongoing robbery, for which both were fired and their petition against the judgment denied by the trial court recently, as per a report by Vice.com.
Los Angeles police officers Louis Lozano and Eric Mitchell have been fired for “willfully abdicating their duty to assist a commanding officer’s response to a robbery in progress and playing a Pokemon mobile game while on duty.”, say official court documents.
As per the report, the incident took place in April 2017 but the court pronounced the final judgment recently after both appealed against the decision of Los Angeles City and “filed a petition for writ of administrative mandate challenging the City’s decision to terminate their employment.” But the trial court denied their petition.
As per the report, both the police officers got a call from a patrol officer to respond to a robbery at Macy’s at Los Angeles’ Crenshaw Mall. They were near the location of the robbery but did not respond and drove away instead.
Based on video and audio evidence, both were eventually fired. According to the report, they did talk about responding to the robbery, but chose not to and a few moments later, began chasing a Snorlax in the game.
The official court documents say that “For approximately the next 20 minutes, [the in-car monitoring system] captured [Mitchell and Lozano] discussing Pokémon as they drove to different locations where the virtual creatures apparently appeared on their mobile phones. On their way to the Snorlax location, Officer Mitchell alerted Officer Lozano that ‘a Togetic just popped up’.”
“After Mitchell apparently caught the Snorlax – exclaiming, ‘Got ‘em’ – petitioners agreed to ‘go get the Togetic’ and drove off.”
