It was a sunny November afternoon when a 20-year-old Savannah man told police that a stranger shot him while he was playing basketball on East 54th Street. Officers interviewed him at the hospital while others processed the crime scene and canvassed the area looking for leads on a suspect.
But the man recanted his story hours later and admitted the gun belonged to him and was discharged accidentally during a basketball game.
“We get reports like this all the time,” said Savannah-Chatham Police Sgt. David Barefield.
Last week, two 17-year-olds reported they were shot at from a nearby car, an incident that left one of them injured. But hours later, again, the teenagers confessed that one accidentally shot the other and police recovered the gun used during the incident.
Law enforcement officers say the growing trend of falsely reported shootings is troublesome because it elevates Savannah’s crime statistics, wastes department resources and distracts police from investigating legitimate incidents.
The false shooting report from November is only one of hundreds police receive each year, Barefield said. They inflate Savannah-Chatham’s crime statistics by about 10 percent annually.
“When we have these shootings happen, then all of our detectives are focused on what just happened,” he said, “We have people go to the crime scenes, people that go to the hospital, people that are interviewing witnesses. It’s a lot of wasted resources that we have to use.”
And it’s not just police resources and manpower that gets involved, Barefield said.
“Sometimes we’ll get Chatham-Savannah Counter Narcotics Team involved,” he said. “We’ll get other agencies involved to identify a suspect that doesn’t exist because the crime didn’t happen. There’s just so many man hours and days that can be wasted on a case like that, and they could be better used on a case somewhere else. It’s very disheartening.”
People who file the false reports vary in age, race and criminal backgrounds, but the most common reason for lying is to avoid jail time, said police Major Richard Zapal.
“If you’re a convicted felon, you cannot possess a gun,” he said. “What better indicator is there that you possess a gun other than you got shot — unless, of course, you say somebody shot me and that, of course, explains away why you didn’t have a gun because somebody else shot you.
“That’s usually the most common reason. Another reason is that ‘I was involved in a drug deal and I was shot.’ Very rarely is it that you were just walking down the street and were shot randomly.”
The problem exists in other departments around the region, too.
In April, Port Wentworth police arrested a man for shooting himself and then orchestrated a story blaming a girlfriend for the shooting. The man was accused of various crimes, including criminal defamation. The man’s girlfriend was originally taken into custody as a suspect, but was later released after being interviewed. Port Wentworth police officials could not be reached for comment.
Police say they prosecute those who file false reports when evidence is available. Filing a false police report is a misdemeanor and giving police a false statement is felony.