Tuesday, November 1, 2016

2016's Hottest Trend in "Tainted" Halloween Candy: Tweet First, 911 Later

A big red flag that's emerged in reports of "tainted" Halloween candy in recent years: People who post to social media before calling police, or who never actually call the police at all. That way you get all the attention, but none of the getting charged with filing a false report!

Here are 2016's reports so far, and I'll keep updating this post as the investigations continue:
  • A Halifax, Nova Scotia man says his son cut his thumb on a razor blade hidden in a candy bar. With his son's thumb still bleeding, the man did not clean the wound or put a Band-Aid on it - he took a picture of the bloody thumb and posted it to Twitter. 
  • Right after news of the first razor incident broke in Halifax, and more than 12 hours after trick-or-treating ended, a girl in a neighboring town suddenly found a razor in a piece of her candy.
  • A woman in Huntington, TX posted to Facebook that she found a needle in candy, but apparently hasn't called police. Two women in Marysville, WA also took to Facebook to report finding objects in candy
  • Someone reported finding a razor blade in candy in Manistee, MI. But get this: "Last year, police in the City of Manistee said two children had razor blades hidden in their candy. Police determined that a family member of the victims was behind that incident. The family member had mental-health issues, police said." Very few of the news reports on this year's incident are referencing last year's hoax. 
  • A woman in New Jersey reports finding a needle in candy. This incident is not far from last year's Philadelphia suburbs needle-in-candy hoax, though none of this year's local media coverage mentions last year's identical scare turned out to be hoax.
  • Woman in Wisconsin Rapids, WI says her child found a nail in a Tootsie Roll
  • Ottawa police have already declared one report of tainted candy "unfounded."
  • One Wyoming town apparently got extremely hype for tainted candy & scary clowns. "Rock Springs Police Public Information Officer Alison Deters said as of 10am, the department has received one call about suspicious candy which had liquid on the inside. Officers believe the candy may have had something spilled on it, or it broke during transport."
  • Update! First confirmed needle-in-candy hoax in Christiansburg, VA
Tainted Halloween candy is almost always a hoax, but that doesn't stop media and police from acting like every needle in candy is CERTAIN ATTEMPTED CHILD MURDER.

No comments: