Is this a good reason NOT to carry a cellphone in your hip pocket?
Two thieves, in their early twenties, had been stealing electronic games from a Target store. A strange 911 call came into a Madison, Wisconsin police dispatcher. At first, she did not realize what she was listening to as the two bragged on their thefts and plans to sell the stolen games to a local game store. After an hours recording, the dispatcher notified police detectives of the call. Detectives were waiting for them at the game store and were arrested. Question: is this a good-enough reason not to carry your cellphone in your hip pocket? Do you have other examples of how carrying a cellphone in your hip pocket has gotten you into trouble?
Source: ABC News.
Observing members:
0
Composing members:
0
13 Answers
“Butt dialing” strikes one for the good guys!
Crime does not pay. I just heard of a case where two thieves were caught in the DC area when someone used a “Where is my cell phone app” to locate the cell phone they stole, and thus the thieves. He then alerted the police who picked them up.
What astonishes me most about this story is the fact that the detectives were the ones arrested. (And who got that collar, I wonder?)
I know someone who was having an affair and his phone accidentally called his wife when he was with his mistress. The wife got an earful! I felt so bad for her. :/
Haha, most unfortunate (for the thieves) pocket-dial ever. Many phones (flip phones, for example) can’t pocket dial, though, and some are able to be “locked” so that keys won’t work until you enter in a particular combo. I think the best reason not to carry a cell phone in your pocket is (for women, anyway) that pockets often aren’t big enough and it can fall out easily.
I once pocket dialed my parents while I was home alone and singing loudly and badly. Oops.
How do you butt-dial 911?
@fizzbanger Some phones have a speed dial setting of “9” and when you hit “9” it dials 9–1-1.
That’s why I always buy flip phones. It’s nearly impossible to butt-dial one.
Wow…what a fluke that was. Too much of a fluke to say if it’s a good thing or not. In the eyes of the law, I guess it all worked out.
But if I was in the woods and some fucker wearing someone’s face was chasing me with a chainsaw, the last I’d want would be to fall on my ass and break the only thing that could help me out of this.
And if all the signals were out…I wouldn’t want it to damage my spine, or go up my ass or anything, if I fell.
Given how hard it is to trip the “Slide to unlock” feature of a touchscreen phone (either Android or iPhone), then access the contact list (or, indeed, any function remotely capable of sending anything) by accident, I see this as an issue only for old-school candybar dumbphones. Then again, I had a candybar dumbphone and it required a certain set of keypresses to unlock. The odds against hitting that were pretty drastic, and then speed-dialing 911… they were stupid in more ways than you know if they made that even a million-to-one thing.
@jerv – I had one of those candybar dumbphones millions and millions of years ago. You’re right, it took a complex set of key-presses and special buttons on the side to unlock. Would you believe I still made a few butt-calls on that thing from time to time…
Just out of curiosity, are many of you people keeping your phone in your back pocket? That is asking for trouble, and there is no way I would want to sit on my Droid X. You can’t buttt-dial if it isn’t near your butt (if for no reason other than my front pockets usually have some slack in the fabric while my back pockets are “patch pockets” which don’t, falling on your ass as @Symbeline points out isn’t an issue if your phone is on the other side, and pickpockets will go for the easy pocket rather than grab your junk.
Just like my wallet, my phone always goes in a front pocket. Screen facing in, just in case I get hit near the junk.
Answer this question 
Composing members:
0
