Police Crack Down On Fake Robbery Victims

Police say the number of people who lie about being robbery victims is increasing. For the most part, detectives have not pursued those who file false reports, but that has now changed. News On 6 crime reporter Lori Fullbright reports robbery detectives are ticked off that so many people choose the "easy way out" to cover up their drug problem or gambling losses.

Detectives say budgets are tight, manpower is stretched and they are slammed trying to catch real robbers. They'll no longer ignore people who take up valuable police resources with robberies that never happened.

It seems someone gets robbed every day in Tulsa. That's the type of crime that scares people and makes them feel unsafe.

While many of the robbery reports are true, detectives say they're seeing more and more that are not. People don't want to accept responsibility for their actions, so they think the easy way out is to file a police report.

"We can see dopers who loan their car out and when it's not returned, they say they got carjacked. People covering their casino losses say they got robbed in the middle of nowhere. People have rent due and don't have money, so they report some type of crime," said Sgt. Dave Walker with the Tulsa Police Robbery Unit.

Police say it's happening so often, they are now going to be arresting people with the misdemeanor offense of filing a false report.

"If people aren't going to do the right thing anyway, we'll force them to by arresting them," said Sgt. Walker.

The problem, of course, is the time detectives spend chasing down false reports which takes away from the time they could be working cases of real victims who experienced real losses.

"It's a waste of our time. We've got real robbers to catch and we're out there spending our time and effort, mostly, the time we have to spend to disprove one of these things. It's troubling," said Sgt. Walker.

Police say a man who recently gave money to a couple of guys on the street for stereo speakers, claimed he was robbed when the guys took his money and never returned. Detectives wrote him a false report ticket and say that's now going to be the norm.

They point to the woman in 2006 who falsely claimed she was robbed when she actually lost her money at a casino. In addition to 15 days in jail and a fine, she had to reimburse the city for the time the K-9 unit and police helicopter spent searching for the phantom suspect.