# Causing somebody to file a false police report **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 14, 2008, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/causing-somebody-to-file-a-false-police-report/433437 "2008-01-14T02:19:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Washoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ecae2f/32.png) [@Washoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Washoe)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2008, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/causing-somebody-to-file-a-false-police-report/433437/1 "2008-01-14T02:19:28Z")
Everybody knows that it’s a crime to file a false police report. However, what kind of legal trouble could a person get into for causing _somebody else_ to file a false police report? Let’s say that I’m talking to my next door neighbor and I say something like “I, Washoe McTalkingape, did in fact kill Nicole Brown Simpson, with a knife, in the library. My neighbor promptly trots off to the local authorities and reports it. Obviously, since my neighbor is acting in good faith she won’t get into any trouble—but what sort of hot water would I be in, and what would the charge typically consist of in most jurisdictions? ---
**Author:** ![IAmNotSpartacus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/cc9497/32.png) [@IAmNotSpartacus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IAmNotSpartacus)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2008, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/causing-somebody-to-file-a-false-police-report/433437/2 "2008-01-14T02:33:43Z")
What would be false in your neighbor’s report? ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2008, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/causing-somebody-to-file-a-false-police-report/433437/3 "2008-01-14T03:05:56Z")
[QUOTE=IAmNotSpartacus] What would be false in your neighbor’s report? [/QUOTE] Nothing in the OP’s scenario. The neighbor would be telling the police “Washoe told me s/he killed Nicole!”, not “I saw Washoe kill Nicole!”. ---
**Author:** ![Washoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ecae2f/32.png) [@Washoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Washoe)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2008, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/causing-somebody-to-file-a-false-police-report/433437/4 "2008-01-14T03:06:27Z")
[QUOTE=IAmNotSpartacus] What would be false in your neighbor’s report? [/QUOTE] The fact that I didn’t actually off Nicole Simpson. I just assumed that was a clearly-understood given. My apologies if I caused any confusion. I did not, in fact, partake in Ms. Simpson’s premature demise. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2008, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/causing-somebody-to-file-a-false-police-report/433437/5 "2008-01-14T03:16:07Z")
[QUOTE=Washoe] The fact that I didn’t actually off Nicole Simpson. I just assumed that was a clearly-understood given. My apologies if I caused any confusion. I did not, in fact, partake in Ms. Simpson’s premature demise. 🙂 [/QUOTE] But your neighbor wouldn’t know that you’re lying when s/he called the police. That’s why there wouldn’t be anying “false” in the police report. ---
**Author:** ![IAmNotSpartacus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/cc9497/32.png) [@IAmNotSpartacus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IAmNotSpartacus)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2008, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/causing-somebody-to-file-a-false-police-report/433437/6 "2008-01-14T03:24:31Z")
[QUOTE=alphaboi867] But your neighbor wouldn’t know that you’re lying when s/he called the police. That’s why there wouldn’t be anying “false” in the police report. [/QUOTE] Exactly what I was thinking. And saying you killed someone is not a crime in and of itself, although I don’t think I’d welcome the scrutiny such a statement would surely bring. ---
**Author:** ![Washoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ecae2f/32.png) [@Washoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Washoe)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2008, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/causing-somebody-to-file-a-false-police-report/433437/7 "2008-01-14T03:27:26Z")
[QUOTE=alphaboi867] But your neighbor wouldn’t know that you’re lying when s/he called the police. That’s why there wouldn’t be anying “false” in the police report. [/QUOTE] Oh, OK—I see what you’re getting at now. But what I’m really driving at is this: what kind of trouble would I get into for lying to somebody about committing a crime, if the lie were reported to the authorities, and they wasted time/resources following up on it? ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2008, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/causing-somebody-to-file-a-false-police-report/433437/8 "2008-01-14T04:22:08Z")
In the UK, at least, there is a criminal offence of “Wasting Police Time” which could give you a few months in prison. Example : [Tsunami hoaxer jailed for wasting police time | UK news | The Guardian](http://www.guardian.co.uk/tsunami/story/0,,1684428,00.html) This is, AFAIK, for people who file reports directly to the police. I don’t think it would apply if someone else reports you. At least you could expect the police to question you, which may not be the most pleasant of experiences. ---
**Author:** ![chorpler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chorpler/32/2888_2.png) [@chorpler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chorpler)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2008, 8:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/causing-somebody-to-file-a-false-police-report/433437/9 "2008-01-14T08:56:59Z")
[QUOTE=Peter Morris] In the UK, at least, there is a criminal offence of “Wasting Police Time” which could give you a few months in prison. Example : [Tsunami hoaxer jailed for wasting police time | UK news | The Guardian](http://www.guardian.co.uk/tsunami/story/0,,1684428,00.html) This is, AFAIK, for people who file reports directly to the police. I don’t think it would apply if someone else reports you. [/QUOTE] Which sounds like pretty much the same thing as the crime of “filing a false police report” over here, right? I wouldn’t **think** there’d be anything they could charge you with, but I anxiously await further commentary. My guess is that the only way you could be charged with something is if you did what **Washoe** specified, and then continued wasting police time by refusing to admit that you were lying, causing them to have to go through all the trouble of proving to their own satisfaction that you were lying. And even then, there might be nothing they could charge you with – as far as I can tell, that John Mark Karr guy (the jackass who confessed, evidently falsely, to killing Jon Benet Ramsey) never went to jail for all the time and money the Boulder police spent investigating him (which, according to Wikipedia, was somewhere between $13,000 and $30,000), even when it was suggested that he did it deliberately as a way to avoid arrest and prosecution in Thailand. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2008, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/causing-somebody-to-file-a-false-police-report/433437/10 "2008-01-14T12:45:01Z")
[QUOTE=Washoe] …what kind of trouble would I get into for lying to somebody about committing a crime, if the lie were reported to the authorities, and they wasted time/resources following up on it? [/QUOTE] In the case of John Mark Karr, who confessed to killing Jonbent Ramsey, [nothing at all](http://abcnews.go.com/US/LegalCenter/story?id=2534790&page=1): > [@](#): > > Neither his purported open sexual desire for children nor his history of marrying and allegedly abusing underage girls led to any charges that would hold up in court. As far as the justice system could tell, Karr was guilty of nothing more than being creepy. ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2008, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/causing-somebody-to-file-a-false-police-report/433437/11 "2008-01-14T14:07:45Z")
Lying is not a crime. Lying to the police can be if you are obstructing an investigation or hindering your own apprehension. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2008, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/causing-somebody-to-file-a-false-police-report/433437/12 "2008-01-14T15:46:00Z")
[Tawana Brawley](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tawana_Brawley) wasted everybody’s time and money and got away without legal repercussions.