that have happened to you, or played on someone else.

here's mine.

i'm a new guy, and just got off my FTO. so i really make it a point, and go outta way not to screw up or piss anybody off. so i was easy prey.

i was running a tad bit behind on getting to a meeting. so upon my arrival at the station i just parked out front. after everything was over i came out to leave & wallah! my squad car is gone!!

imagine my dismay. how the hell do you explain a missing squad! (mind you, i wasn't fully aware that our keys fit most of our units at the time.)

at first, i thought somebody was messing with me. after a bit, and no hints of humor on anyone's faces, that thought turned to fear. trying at all costs to E&E (escape & evade) my sarge while scouring the station for an understanding body. i went up to this guy (one of my FTO's). and said "you wouldn't happen to know where 118 went do ya?"...."i thought YOU were in 118!" he says.

they didn't drag it out too much longer, but gave me a scare. turns out, it was sarge's idea.

anyway, share some stories that'll give me some ideas for some far off-into the future pay back.

A simple one is to switch your buddies channel on his car radio while on a call with him. He then rides around calling in trafic stops to another city's dispatcher.
Myself and a buddy went to a call one time, and while there he filled my backseat with stray cats that were hanging around the house we were checking. I rode around wondering what the hell that noise was. I then saw two cats in the back window through the rear view mirror, and two or three squeezing out from under the passenger seat and cage.

try turning the siren on wail when the vehicle is shut off..... guess what happens when you turn the key on?,  simple, but effective!
sometimes the simplest things are the best.
(edited to add, depends on what type of siren, this works with most federal brand sirens)

Along the lines of the siren….  If your radio system is hooked up like ours….


Our PA will cut out the siren and of course the radio.  So, turn the PA on with the PA volume all the way down,  key the mike, from the passenger side of the car, jam the mike between the drivers door and the seat, keeping the mike keyed.  Then hit the siren. (the siren will not go off because the mike is keyed). When the unsuspecting opens up the door the door will release the mike key and the siren will start wailing!  It’s a good one, usually takes them a second or two to figure out what is going on.  It’s especially effective when they are parked in the courthouse parking lot!   One possible necessary step to add is to dim all the radio lights.  After this joke is played on someone, one tends to pick up the habit of looking at the radio channel before hopping in the car!  

We used to do that to the other crews at UVa when I worked for LifeCare. Carl and I [b]ALWAYS[/b] locked our ambulance. The poor trusting souls who worked with us usually learned to do so fast, as well....

Another good one I heard about was an EMS supervisor (LT) who called his wife every day on his cell phone and talked all day to her. When he was off at the hospital, one of the crews taped his PA switch so his conversations the rest of the day were broadcast as he cruised the area....

Scott

P.S. UVa [b]HATES[/b] any siren use within two blocks of the hospital....

Take a flexicuff,  loop it around the drive shaft just behind the transmission. stick the end under itself so there is no slack.  Somewhere down the road the tip is going to come loose and the car sounds like it's going to self destruct.  Good idea to prime rookies with a "You broke it and had to pay for it" story beforehand.

An officer I knew got into another cop's office in the middle of the night and wrapped [i]everything[/i] in aluminum foil.  Desk, chair, pencils, computer, desklamp...  Apparently it was quite a sight.

Get that nasty fingerprint ink, the kind applied to a bad with a steel roller. Put it under the doore handles. WOrks especially great on night shift.

Send annoying alphnumeric pages to your sergeant aor co-workers from the paging system (works especially great if you can send pages through e-mail, like with Airtouch). My favorites are bogus "error" messages telling the user to contact customer service immediately.

Crickets + unlocked patrol cars.

Business cards-never leave them unsecured. Put them on the walls of the female restrooms. Put them in the holding cells. Give them to random homeless people. Give them to random "exotic dancers." If a detective or supervisor leaves them on their desk for walk-in reports, go through the stack and randomly write "I love you" on the back of the cards.

There are many, many more...

KY jelly or Nitropaste (for my fellow medics out there) on the underside of the door handles of another crew's rig is one of my favorites.

Mix in a little pepperspray for effect. [BD]

The old trick of turning everything on in an off & unattended car still gets played at my dept. [:)]

P3[pyro][^][heavy]

oh god, these are too good!!

i'm have to say i'm partial to the 'stray cat' & the business card pranks.

thanks guys & keep 'em comin. this is too funny.

benzocaine on the steering wheel is pretty cool, too.

Take a 1000cc bag of fluid (Ringers or NaCL) and an administration set, flush it through, put a 14gu catheter on the end, put the bag under the brake pedal (cover it with floor mat so he can't see it) and run the tubing up the A pillar and position it on the visor so the catheter points towards the driver. When he gets in the car and presses the brake pedal down he'll get soaked..[:)]

Quoting Bill Murray from Stripes.....

"I wanna party with you!"


Scott

I'd be afraid of using nitropaste these days. Some of the older medics might be on Viagra these days....

Scott

Fill one of those sports bottles (like you find on a bicycle) with warm water. Enter a stall or use a urinal next to an occupied stall. Immediately engage occupant of adjacent stall in conversation, preferably a good short joke. Begin laughing at your own joke while you're squeezing warm water into basin. As you laugh harder, deviate from the basin across floor and then onto said occupants feet and ankles. I did this to several cops who come by our firehouse. one actually drew his weapon...some people have no sense of humor.

If you have access to I.V. tubing, run as many feet as required above the ceiling tiles at your targets bunk, place a 14 ga. catheterin ceiling tile and aim while they are out on a call. fit other end with a three way stopcock and hide in a remote location. attach a 60 cc syringe, squeeze forcefully, and...BAM!!! you have a wet headed rookie. (It helps to pre-fill the tubing with water and bleed all the air. Also get someone to help aim the stream, when it is perfect, turn mattress upside down and they will never know.

After someone makes up their bunk for the night..swap their box springs with a second mattress. when the go to lay down, they will bounce about two feet in the air before crashing to the floor.

wait until your rookie gets in the shower, get a WHOLE bag of all purpose flour, and standby. when he gets out and begins to dry off dump flour over head. simple but effective.

Coworker of mine went to assist EMS on a medical run.  He got there before EMS did and noticed the woman was bleeding from her crotch area.  He told control over the air to "disregard EMS, she's just on her period".  Well needless to say after we all stopped laughing at him someone tied a tampon onto his MDT antenna.  He didn't notice it the entire shift.  Funny how everyone else noticed it though.

HAHAHAHA!!! holy shit, that's funny!!

Turning on all the electronics while the car is off has been around for years. What we used to do is pour talcum powder into the a/c vents and turn the blower on high.

Be careful fooling around with radio frequencies. You never know when someone needs to call for help.

One idiot, a detective naturally, used to leave his off duty gun lying around civilians that he knew. Every one was a practical joker so one unloaded the gun. He never noticed. Luckily someone gave him back the bullets before he left.

Another time we all went to a wedding in Jersey. He was the only one who brought his gun and decided he didn`t want to carry it in his tux. Somebody told him to put it in a plastic bag in the water tank of the toilet. Too bad he didn`t seal the bag first. Like I said, he was a detective.

Local NYPD favorite: find a Spanish bodega that sells live chickens, place chicken(s) in rear cage of RMP.  Sometimes the egg in the visor gag works too.  Here's a good one. A rookie in my old command had assistant desk duty one night.  There is a radio tuned in to the patrol frequency that he monitors in order to call tow truck dispathcers, bring units to the stationhouse, etc.  He was distracted and the frequency wwas switched to the open air channel (safe :point to point).  A few cops then switched their radios over, and the fun began.  A hidden cop put over a frantic transmission from an aviation unit stating that he was experiencing a malfunction that would require him to land the helicopter IMMEDIATELY.  He is, at this point screaming into the radio saying he is within the confines of the precinct and must land on the roof, but is having some trouble finding the building.  Desk Sergeant orders the rookie to run outside and turn on all the turret lights of the RMP's(patrol cars) outside.  He then instructs him to grab a radio and 2 flashlights and head to the roof to guide him in.  To answer your question, yes he did.  He was up there a good 5 minutes waving his flashlights and trying to help the pilot find his way.  He was finally told to report to the desk, and came down the steps to find 20 cops writhing on the ground laughing themselves silly.  A classic.  That man is now an NYPD Sgt.
Scary huh? (heh heh) Pick the most gullible rookie you can find, and give it a shot.
Mike
NYPD Warrant Squad

First thought i had, too....

Scott

It was OK, the city we switched it to was next door to ours. We all switched our car radios over to listen, also (leaving our portables on our own channel). This guy was too easy to mess with. He never paid attention to his radio anyway. So one night while he was hanging out at the Shell station, we all went screaming by with lights and sirens going, went about two blocks, and hid. Sure enough he came racing past with no idea where he was going or what was happening. Too embarrassed to say he wasn't paying attention to his radio, he waited several minutes then called us asking if the situation was OK and if we needed him on scene.

We filled a rookie's patrol car with old phone books while she was eating.  Some of the third shift guys filled a car with styrofoam peanuts during a meal break also.

This one has been around for years.  Works great for dispatchers.  Call in to your dispatcher (victim) and advise that you have spotted a believed stolen car on a railroad track and you think you hear a train.  Describe the car and tag number (dipatchers car ofcourse) and be waiting in the parking lot when the dispatcher comes.

When I was on 1st shift in a small, high-crime town, some of the older guys would find some dark alley and catch some sleep with the windows rolled up and the A/C on. We'd spray the air vents with OC and run. Always good.

I'll have to remember that one...[:D]

Another entry on my "I wanna party with YOU!" list....

Scott

We've got a Sgt in my dept that is always playing jokes on other people but he can't stand it when the joke is on him.  Anyway, this Sgt thought it would be funny to let all the air out of the tires of one of our deputies patrol car.  So the deputy calls a buddy of his that's a wrecker driver.  The next day they wait till this sgt is eating lunch and they jack up his patrol car and take the tires off and put it on blocks.  He comes out from eating and all his tires are gone and the car is up on blocks.  

I obtained a roll of industrial plastic wrap that is much thicker than saran wrap. The CPl. that relieved me at 5:00am, was always known to be at work on time every time. I felt like he need to be late so Myself and another deputy, went to his house and wrapped the entire crusier with several layers of this industrial plastic. Since it is the type that sticks to itself, the car looked like a large roll of saran wrap. It would have taken a hack saw to get into it. The only problem I was out of disk to take pictures of it with my digital camera.
    It costed him some unwanted time, but he still managed to make the shift brief.

Best joke I ever played...

One of my shiftmates liked to make a routine out of dinner.  He went to the same restaurant and parked in the same place (behind it) 3 or 4 times a week.  So another officer and I went to the local wrecker lot & got a few handfuls of glass.  We then used a spare key & opened his car, rolled down the window, scattered some glass on his seat and on the ground, and then hid his shotgun, bag, $500 PBT and some other stuff in his trunk.  We then hid and watched the anguish as he took 10 minutes to decide to call the boss!

Another trick I play often is to take a bunch of dots from a 3-ring binder hole punch and then place them in an envelope.  I rig the envelope over the driver visor with tape and watch the fun.  Gets the new guys everytime.  Also works great in brand new cars.  Harmless and not too bad to clean up.  I usually donate the change for the Auto Vac. [}:D]

Good one for rookie FF's or medics.  Take a syringe with a 16 or 18 guage needle, fill with water and freeze till it's solid. Then stick the needle only down through the ceiling tile over the intended victims bunk, after a while it starts to melt and drip slowly on the guys head. Drives them crazy because they can't see the needle. Play it right and you can get this guy 3 or 4 nights in a row before he figures it out.

When I was an SP in the USAF, I had this rookie kid go into squadron ops for 50' of "flightline".

Got the same kid later when I had him climb up the staircase to the control tower to get the spare keys for an F-16C. [:D]

P3[pyro][^][heavy]

I forgot Armor All. Carl and I almost never got to use the good unit, so we wouls always clean it nice after the shift. And Armor All the seat, the dash, and everywhere our sergeant would have to step to get in it the next day. (He is like 5'4".)


Scott

We once stole the boss's Blow up Gumby (the boss's mascot) and held it for ransom..  We sent him polaroids of it tied and gagged, with a knife at it's throat..   We demanded that he buy mini chimis at a local restaraunt for the entire division..  After we ate the chimis, he got a note telling him to Check the visitors lot at TPD where he found Gumby cuffed to the wheel of an IPS vehicle..

Just for kicks...

After arresting a perp and searching his vehicle I pulled [b]my own firearm[/b] out of my holster without him looking and asked the perp, [b]"What the HELL is this? Look what I found under the front seat!"[/b] to the utter dismay and shock of the perp. Yup, I can be a dick sometimes, but it's funny as hell...

I'm waiting for a badguy to say(and I know it will eventually happen), [b]"Did you find the other one too?!?!?"[/b][shock]

Victim goes into single person bathroom. After you hear the flush, hold current from Stun Gun on outside of the door knob.

OMFG!!!!!![shock][shock][shock]

I gotta get up the nerve to try this...

P3[pyro][^][heavy]

Expect the perp (even in cuffs) to try and make a run for it if he really did something "bad"...I just do it for minor infractions, and when I'm in a good mood.

I'm not LEO but a friend of mine is a city cop and he pulled me over one night and got his partner(whom i didn't know) to tell me to get out of the car and place my hands on the hood and all that kinda stuff and cuffed me and told me to wait behind my vehicle.. he dug around in my truck and found my benelli nova 12ga in the back seat and started saying WELL WELL WELL what have we here.. then proceeded to put me in the back of the cop car.. when i got in my buddy looked at me and had a SHIT EATING GRIN on his face.. i about came out of those cuffs to whoop his ass! lol!!!!!.. well the next day he came by and asked if i wanted to go with him for some lunch.. and i declined I knew where he was going and would be there for awhile just waiting for a table.. he was in his pickup truck and was off duty.. well when he got back to his car he looked at it and called my cell phone and said YOU SON OF A BITCH!.. i jus laughed and said payback is a bitch..  what i ended up doing was filling the entire car with packing peanuts.. his truck has a sunroof.. so i opened his door.. opened his sunroof and closed the door.. got in the bed of his truck and poured the packing peanuts in his truck until no more would fit.. he got soooooooooooooo mad at me..  [:D]

Heres a good one I use. Take a fresh roll of crime scene tape and tie the end to your buddys bumper (up underneath). Rest the whole roll underneath also. When he drives away and hits a bump the roll falls and he will soon have 300 yards of crime scene tape streaming from his car.
  When I was working graves on FTO my FTO fell asleep when I was writing reports. I finished early and painted all of his left hand fingernails with the white out. We got a call and he woke up. He didnt see his fingernails until he was writing out an FI card on the call.  
   I am working the bike unit now and it is funny to let about 20psi out of your partners bike tire. After about 3 miles he is huffing and puffing while your pedaling away like a champ.

Our chief carries a alphaneumeric pager. We ragularly page him with the message "LOW BATTERY". He goes through a pack of AA batteries in less than a week.

Heres one that are regularly played on rookies at my Dept.

(If the crew sleeps in normal, single beds with box springs)....Take 1 full air tank from SCBA, 1 large normal latex glove, 1 roll of elastic 2" tape, and as much oxygen tubing as needed....(I know it doesnt sound like this would work, but it DOES)..."seal" one end of the tubing to the SCBA tank as best as possible (with alot of tape)...stick the other end of the tubing into the cuff of the glove (again "sealing" with alot of tape)...lay the glove flat, between the victims mattress and box spring (near one side), running the tubing inconspicuously to the SCBA tank which is hidden under YOUR bunk.
After the victim has fallen asleep, reach under your bunk, and "crack" open the valve on the SCBA tank (not too much, but just enough....you may have to play with it a bit)
one of two things will happen (depending on how slowly you let the air flow, and how well you "sealed" things.
the most desired outcome: the glove will slowly inflate to truly astonishing size, and cause the victim to roll out of bed sometime during the night.
EQUALLY HILLARIOUS OUTCOME: the glove will RAPIDLY inflate to astonishing size...literally "tossing" the victim out of bed.

I have witnessed BOTH outcomes many times...it WORKS.

here is another one (we tend to joke ALOT)

If you carry Cetacaine on your rescue truck (ambulance)[i]we call them rescue trucks here,..some call them ambulances[/i]

take a pack of that green chewing gum that is in the little squares with the gooey mint filling (I cant remember the name)

Replace the gooey filling with Cetacaine, re-wrap the gum....offer some to your victim......you can figure the rest out.

yet ANOTHER one....
The last batch of rookies had it rough....(We have our own dispatchers, and they were in on this one also)
The main fire station "Central" in town is two story, with a hose tower built onto it. A rookie was sent to the top of the hose tower for "Fire Watch Duty"....(in the middle of the city no less)...He was given a set of binoculars, a radio, and a specific set of instructions to keep Dispatch updated every half hour.
phone calls were placed to the other 15 stations in the county "SIT BY YOUR RADIOS, AND LISTEN".....
every half hour you heard on the radio [i]rookie[/i] "CENTRAL FIREWATCH TO DISPATCH, ALL IS CLEAR AT THIS TIME, NOTHING TO REPORT"....[i]Dispatch[/i] "WE COPY FIREWATCH,...ALL CLEAR AT NINETEEN HUNDRED HOURS" (or whatever time it was)
He was up ther till around tenn o'clock at night.

When I worked the street we would chase Santa around every Christmas.  New dispatchers always had to work Christmas and Christmas eve so it worked out great.

It was usually everyone on the shift sitting in a parking lot.  It started with a vehicle stop....of course it was a red car of some type, usually a convertable.  The stop turned into a vehicle pursuit.  The vehicle pursuit turned into a foot chase.  Obviously the suspect had on a red coat and pants.  The big finish was running the persons drivers license after catching them.  Yes, in the state of Iowa (I work in Missouri) a person has changed their name to Santa Claus.  We would run them by number (drivers license number) and the dispatcher saw....Santa Claus come up on the MULES hit.

I would post the Santa info, but I am sure that would not be legal.  If you live in Iowa I am sure you can "page out" for him.  

We would also hide a recorder in the dispatch room so we could hear what the dispatcher was saying when off radio.

medcop

Worst one I ever saw:

A female deputy with a nearby S.O. came to the substation to relay a prisoner back to the jail. When she went to change out the handcuffs from mine to hers, she discovered that her co-workers had double locked both sets of her cuffs when she was away from her duty belt. That's wrong!

Dangerous, too.

Someone had a stuffed rattlesnake she got from a flea market.  We put it on the driver's floorboard of the SGT's car and watched him.  

He got in, drove off, and nothing happened. Kind of puzzled us.  About 10 minutes later he comes busting in the door with a very badly stomped rattlesnake in hand and murder in his eyes. Turns out the snake slid under the seat when he took off, and slid forward when he stopped for the garage door, hitting him on the ankle.  He  tried to stomp it to death and then bailed, and spent a great deal of time on the floor of the parking garage looking for fang marks.

My friend did something similar to a female LT.  Pulled door to door for a conference, and he reached over and dropped a green grass snake in her lap.

She managed to exit the vehicle in a full duty rig, without undoing the seatbelt, over the MDT, and out the passenger door.  Made good time too!

Edited to add,  I'm sending out "low battery" messages right now!! that's the best I've heard in a while.

Went in the chinese grocery store and bought a dried fish. Put it in one of the other guys cars and had a blast watching him try to figure out where the smell was coming from. That fish made its way all around the department. In lockers, desks filing cabinets...etc.

WOW, I can't stop laughing reading all of these.  This is great.  I have a couple to add

1. Put some Vaseline on the telephone ear piece, go to another phone and call to speak with someone you want to have answer it, not the best, but funny to watch them when they have no clue what it is.  

2. I have been the victim of pepperspray on the door handle, so I used a little pepperspray and put it into the vent of the ac unit.  Well that hot day I did it, guess what, my fellow worker started coughing and thought it was something else, so turned up the fan speed, just a few seconds went by before he came flying out of the vehicle.

3. The same guy who stole my lunch one day, got it again, only this time I caught him with his pants down.  It was a Sunday morning and he liked to read his newspaper, so he went into the bathroom to take a crap.  Well, a little blast of punch 2 pepperspray under the door made him come running out of the bathroom, pants at his ankles, newspaper in hand and coughing all the way.  What a sight, I will always laugh when I think of that one.

4. I think this one takes the cake.  We have a Sgt. who likes to play a joke by trying to take off the games, solitaire and mindsweep of the computer, so one guy thought he would get even.  Well, he took some pepperspray and sprayed it onto his electric razor.  He went in the bathroom to shave.  You hear a little, cough.  Then a few seconds go by and a little more coughing.  A few seconds go by, the Sgt. looks at the razor and begins coughing continuously, then he looks in the mirror and starts yelling, oh shit my face burns, talk about trying not to laugh when he went to go shave.  

5.  This one is good too.  We had a guy who had a cold.  He was taking halls to help.  Well he had the orange Halls.  You guessed it, one of the guys took and unwrapped the top one in the pack, sprayed it with pepperspray and wrapped it back up and placed it back into the wrapper.  The next shift, WOW, you would have thought he ate pepperspray, oh wait, he did!  It was so funny.

6. Last one, The same guy took and found a bottle of water that this guy with the cold had been drinking from in the car.  He took the cap off, sprayed the cap with pepperspray and then put the cap back on.  Well, the next shift, he opened his water for a drink and WOW, hot!  Needless to say, if I lose sight of my drink, time to buy a new one.  Our dept. loves to play with pepperspray.