Instead of raiders, I prefer Pokémon

It all happened in mid-April 2017 in Los Angeles. Officer Louis Lozano and Eric Mitchell received a message that there had been an armed robbery at a nearby store and that all units should come to the aid of the officer who was already on the scene. Despite the fact that they were close to the action, they reported that they were quite far away. Why? Because they thought it was more important to hunt Snorlax. And who is Snorlax? It is one of the Pokémon in the game Pokémon Go.

Their actions were exposed by their superiors and the two officers were, logically, fired. But they did not agree with this and complained. In the complaint, they wrote that they were not playing Pokémon Go but only had the Pokémon tracker on, and they did not hear the call for help because it was very loud in the park where they were supposed to be at the time. But the arguments of the applicants did not convince the court, because the camera in the police car told a completely different story...

You can view the entire court document (PDF) at [this address](chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/viewer.html?pdfurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.courts.ca.gov%2Fopinions%2Fdocuments%2FB307412.PDF&clen=174208&chunk=true), but here are just two excerpts from the original to give you a sense about the bizarreness of the whole thing.

»For approximately the next 20 minutes, the [Digital In Car Video System in the squad car] captured petitioners 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," noting it was "[o]n Crenshaw, just South of 50th. After Mitchell apparently caught the Snorlax— exclaiming, "Got 'em"—petitioners agreed to "[g]o get the Togetic" and drove off. When their car stopped again, the DICVS recorded Mitchell saying, "Don't run away. Don't run away," while Lozano described how he "buried it and ultra-balled" the Togetic before announcing, "Got him." Mitchell advised he was "[s]till trying to catch it," adding, "Holy crap, man. This thing is fighting the crap out of me." Eventually Mitchell exclaimed, "Holy Crap. Finally," apparently in reference to capturing the Togetic, and he remarked, "The[ ] guys are going to be so jealous." Petitioners then agreed to return to the 7-Eleven (where Sergeant Gomez later met them) to end their watch. On the way, Mitchell remarked, "I got you a new Pokémon today, dude.""

...and then:

"Petitioners also denied playing Pokémon Go while on duty. They claimed they were monitoring a "Pokémon tracker" application on their phone, but not playing the game itself. As for "catching" Pokémon, Officer Lozano insisted this referred to "capturing [an] image" of the Pokémon on the tracking application to share with friends, while Officer Mitchell said his statements about "fighting" the Togetic referred to "relaying that information to the groups on my app," adding that, "in order to take the picture, occasionally, the creature will fight." Lozano said they were not engaged in a game; rather, it was a "social media event." Mitchell said he did not consider the application a game because it was not "advertised as a game." Petitioners admitted leaving their foot beat area in search of Snorlax, but they insisted they did so "both" as part of an "extra patrol" and to "chase this mythical creature.""

Source: [courts.ca](chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/viewer.html?pdfurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.courts.ca.gov%2Fopinions%2Fdocuments%2FB307412.PDF&clen=174208&chunk=true), the image is symbolic

AI translated