Two US police officers expelled for playing Pokémon Go

Pokemon! Get them all! “All but the real thieves…

Featured Image: Niantic

He remembers. In 2017, Pokémon Go is so hot on every phone that we regularly see a rush of players heading to specific places, to defeat bosses in Raid Battles or try to catch rare Pokémon.

But, as USA Today reported, in the same year, a request for backup was sent to the Los Angeles Police Department, with the aim of rapid intervention in the robbery. Logically, the officers on duty and available respond are present. At least logically, because two of them, Luis Lozano and Eric Mitchell, deliberately ignore this request from one of the leaders, leading to resignation.

If the case resurfaces today, despite dating back several years, it is because of the recent publication of legal documents relating to this case, in which we discovered the reasons for this refusal.

So, we learned that these two officers refused to respond to the Commander in order to play Pokémon Go. Ultimately, in their version, they were on foot patrol and did not hear the call, as according to them they were. In a park where the music was loud.

However, video footage of their car clearly indicates that they were nearby during the robbery and that Luis Lozano told Eric Mitchell that he did not want to take care of him. Despite a second call from his unit, which still went unanswered, Officer Lozano said Snorlax had grown up. For the next 20 minutes, the two talked about a Pokémon as they headed to this location to try and capture it.

Their flight was prolific as Officer Mitchell managed to capture Snorlax and knew he would make his colleagues jealous. They then decide to continue their momentum by going to capture Togetic Pokémon, which they managed to obtain.

Upon investigating the misconduct, the two officers claimed that they never played Pokémon Go, just discussing the matter. Eventually, during testing, they admitted to leaving the area they were supposed to work in to capture Snorlax, insisting she was on extra patrol. (Sure…)

To close this case, Luis Lozano and Eric Mitchell were fired after a unanimous vote. However, they tried to appeal this decision, arguing that the video recording should not have been used as evidence and that they were not given the opportunity to be represented by a lawyer during the hearing.

The appeal was denied on January 7, but failing to convince the thieves, they took Snorlax and Togetic.