Causing Trouble

Sometimes, if there is no business for the business you're in, the only solution is to go out and create some!

Like, say, you sell ice cream down on the corner, but business is slow, so you give a kid an ice cream cone and tell him/her to walk about eating that ice cream so rapturously that other people will ask, "Hey! Wheredja get dat?" And here comes your business.

Or, you're like that Ground Round restaurant we used to have. Free popcorn on the table for you to nibble while you waited for your burger. Free, heavily salted popcorn. Drink sales zoomed.

Or, let's say you and your coworkers are three sheriff's deputies in South Carolina, and crime has taken a holiday. Nothing going on; the local blotter has nothing more than a few lost dogs and looky-loo complaints. Do you, a) sit around waiting for a crook to pull a caper, or b) make four calls to four small towns reporting dead bodies?

I think the answer is pretty clear, don't you? At least, it is for Justin Tyler Reichard, 28, Darien Myles Roseau, 25, and Killian Daniel Loflin, 26, three Chesterfield County deputies charged with misconduct in office, criminal conspiracy and aggravated breach of the peace. 

Police say that on February 4, five phone calls claiming to report an expired person were made in the small Chesterfield County towns of Cheraw, Chesterfield, McBee and Pageland. 

Of course, officers and other first responders had to go check out all five reports and all came back "unverified."

Investigators handling the case could not give a reason why police would generate phony police incidents. All three now-former deputies found reasonable accommodations at the Chesterfield County Detention Center.  

A statement from SLED (the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division) referred to the three as former deputies, but the sheriff's office is not yet confirming their employment status, or lack thereof.

"Prank calls happen, but you don't expect it from cops," McBee resident Briana Davenport told the local news. "Because we're supposed to be calling them to help us out. I think it's messed up for it to happen like that."

 Let's hope their former co-workers can work with the local prosecutors so these three can take their comedy act to a local Ironbar Hilton for a while.