‘Arnold’ Prankster Hits Police Comm Center

A creative and sophisticated prankster using audio clips from Arnold Schwarzenegger movies dialed the Albuquerque (NM) police comm center last January, conferenced three dispatchers together, and then kept them on the line, disrupting operations for over 15 minutes. The call is among the most unusual ever made to a comm center, but used techniques that have now become routine. Police say someone collected several audio clips from Schwarzenegger’s movies, selecting those that would sound like plausible responses to a dispatcher’s questions. The person then dialed the police department’s seven-digit tip line, and when the calltaker answered, began playing back the selected clips. The person made two more calls, and when those calltakers answered, he/she conferenced them into the call. Police determined a location from the call, but the caller apparently falsified the caller ID information, and the address turned out to be uninvolved with the call. Previous prank callers have used VoIP technology to dial the seven or ten-digit telephone numbers of comm centers, and have used so-called “spoofing” services to hide the origin of the call and display a falsified telephone number. Such calls can be traced, but it takes some technical expertise, inter-agency coordination and time. Listen to the prank call here.