Police: Call from ‘burglar’ actually came from dog
Police in Orem, Utah, say a man who thought he was getting a call from a burglar had actually gotten a call from his dog.
Authorities in the community south of Salt Lake City say the man alerted police Wednesday after he received a phone call from his home phone on his cellphone. Officials say the man heard banging and scratching noises on the line and figured it was an intruder.
Police went to the man’s home but didn’t find anything missing or broken.
The man later called officers and told them he figured out the mystery. He said his dog had grabbed the home phone’s receiver and apparently hit the redial button while burying it in the backyard.
Phone home: New York teens pay valets to store devices
Thousands of teenagers who can’t take their cellphones to school have another option, courtesy of a burgeoning industry of sorts in always-enterprising New York City: paying a dollar a day to leave it in a truck that’s parked nearby.
Students might resent an expense that adds up to as much as $180 a year, but even so, leaving a phone at one of the trucks in the morning and then picking it up at the end of the day has become as routine for city teenagers as getting dressed and riding the morning-rush subway.
Cellphones and other devices, such as iPods and iPads, are banned in all New York City public schools, but the rule is widely ignored except in the 88 buildings that have metal detectors.
The trucks that collect the cellphones, however, have safety issues — one was held up in the Bronx in June, and some 200 students lost their phones. That could be why one operator refused to speak to a reporter recently.
“Next, next, have the phone off, have the money out,” an employee yelled as the teens texted and listened to music until the last possible second. At the truck window, each student exchanged a phone and a dollar for a numbered yellow ticket.
The cellphone trucks appear to be unique to New York City.
“In this day and age, it’s ridiculous that the NYC Department of Education doesn’t allow us to store them on site,” said Robin Klueber, the PTA president at Frank McCourt High School on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
The Department of Education did not comment on whether lockboxes in schools were being considered. Spokeswoman Marge Feinberg said only, “We have a longstanding policy that does not allow students to use cellphones in schools. It is in Chancellor’s Regulation A-412, and there are no plans to change this.”
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From The Detroit News and The Boston Herald.
