Crime warnings are generally a good thing — we all want to know what to watch out for; we all want to know how to protect ourselves from those who might seek to do us harm.
Inevitably, though, the result of our being inundated with such warnings (both real and fictional) is that we start to view everything, even the most ordinary events of daily life, as evidence that crime is all around us.
Plenty of people have come away from encounters with individuals in parking lots convinced that they have barely escaped being drugged, robbed or having one of the children abducted and many of these are duly reported to the police.
These incidents then also sometime become the back story for well-intentioned but baseless rumors and internet “warnings” that can go Facebook viral and cause panic and alarm in a community.
Walmart. shopping malls. medical centers and amusement places like theme parts and movie theaters make up the bulk of these reports according to officials with Hoaxslayer, a popular internet rumor watchdog.
Fort Smith and the surrounding area is not immune to such Facebook activity. A post purporting to detail an incident in the parking lot of a local medical facility made the rounds on Tuesday but some of the facts are seemingly in conflict.
The Facebook post by an area woman, which has been shared over 200 times in a 24 hour period, claims that she and her children were accosted by a “weird Asian guy” who tried to “carry away one of her children” and that she had “filed a police report”.
In order to assail the public’s concern, Inside Fort Smith attempted to confirm the incident.
When contacted, the original poster stated that she didn’t want the story publicized for “ghe safety of her family” and that she had asked everyone who had shared the story to take it down. She also confirmed that she had filed a police report.
However, an email response from FSPD public information officer Daniel Grubbs about the supposed incident said that no report had been filed with the department under the name of the original poster or anyone else and there were no reports of a similar abduction attempt on file:
“Don’t see anything like that or any contact with ***** ******** in our records management system.
Sgt. Daniel Grubbs
Public Affairs Office
Fort Smith Police Department
Office: (479) 709-5141
Fax: (479) 709-5151”
In addition, the head of security with the local medical facility also said that no similar report had been made to their office within the last 48 hours.
We have no way of confirming the incident as reported.
While child safety s a primary concern for the Fort Smith Police Department, as it is with any police department, officials say incidents like the one detailed in this social media post- while well meaning-can cause undue concern for parents. The department says information about suspected child abductions is available to anyone who inquires.
The internet is full of great information on child safety, and there are a lot of bad people out there doing bad things. The local police urges anyone that may have had any kind of encounter where they feel like their safety or the safety of their children has been put in peril to call 479-709-5141 or dial 911 in there is imminent danger.
