Investigation uncovers fraudulent public safety website

Reprinted with permission

Hailey Sue Spiceus, Trotter County Times (TCT.com):

Outraged at the lies and misrepresentations published by a popular public safety website, Drebin Park, Illinois Officer Louis Cristillo and Firefighter William Abbott teamed up to investigate stories the site published. The pair can usually be found fighting crime and fires together as well as handling the town’s weekly trash pick-up as members of the Drebin Park Public Safety/Sanitation Department.

Director William C. Dukenfield disclosed the investigation at his weekly press briefing in City Hall. Dukenfield praised the pair for shedding light on numerous stories published by CallTheCops.net that turned out to be misleading or false.

Director Dukenfield first became suspicious when he approached WalMart about taking over the town’s EMS service, currently operated by Drebin Park Animal Control/EMS Division. Dukenfield had learned that WalMart was branching out into EMS from a CallTheCops.net exclusive story.

When contacted by TCT, a spokesman at WalMart was unaware of the article but admitted that the company has received numerous requests from Drebin Park and other jurisdictions interested in outsourcing EMS operations.

An earlier article on the site about EMS crews harvesting organs in the field prompted Dukenfield to urge the Drebin Park City Council to undertake a study to look at the feasibility of such a program for the town. The study showed this could be a profitable venture for Drebin Park, long plagued by dwindling tax revenue and poor financial health. It’s unclear what impact learning of the websites credibility issues will have on the pilot harvesting program, poised to begin next week.

The final straw for Dukenfield came early in March when he proposed changing the town’s EMS service to Drebin Park Animal Control/Pre-Hospital Care Professional Division.  This was based on a CallTheCops.net article Dukenfield read about the move to now refer to EMTs as Pre-hospital Care Professionals.

It was only after the name change was approved by the City Council that town officials discovered a problem. When the first article about the former EMS operation appeared in the Trotter County Times it used the acronym “PCP”. Dukenfield then realized the name change was not well thought out.

It was at that point Dukenfield was certain that the website’s articles are really poorly researched and possibly even fraudulent. That’s when Dukenfield put Officer Cristillo and Firefighter Abbott on the case.

In no time the pair discovered that almost every article on CallTheCops.net was false (with the possible exception of this one). Their findings will be presented to a grand jury in Trotter County next week. 

Interviewed at Public Safety Headquarters on Friday, Cristillo and Abbott were asked how difficult it was to break the case. Louis Cristillo replied, “Not difficult at all.” 

Asked to elaborate, Firefighter Abbott told TCT, “We knew immediately these articles were satire, any idiot could figure that out.”

Pressed further, Abbott said when they started reading the articles it dawned on them that a lot of the “stupid and strange” things management has been doing in recent months seemed to be based on CallTheCops.net. According to Abbott, “The only thing we haven’t found is an article that proposes combining the police and fire departments into a public safety department. Apparently the bosses came up with that stupid idea all by themselves.”

In a related development, Cristillo and Abbott also discovered that most of the articles on the popular fire service site STATter911.com are also satire. The pair said that became obvious a while ago when they came across an article on the site describing how firefighters in the Nation’s Capital were sent out on overnight crime patrol in some of the toughest neighborhoods in Washington. Officer Louis Cristillo told TCT, “The guy Statter who runs the site thinks he’s fooling readers with that crap. Even as idiotic as our management is, they aren’t sending unarmed firefighters on crime patrol. No one would do that. That was completely made up”.