Hell, this is just scratching the surface. How about if your friend shone his flashlight in my neighbor’s window? She has terminal cancer. What if she were just managing to drop off to sleep after a day of racking pain and your friend woke her up? What a laugh riot!
Shining a light into someones house as a prank is juvenile at best. Now secretly paying someones electric bill for them. That’s a prank that would be talked about for years.
Some pizza delivery drivers use a flashlight at night to locate a house by address number, and they may inadvertently shine the flashlight into a window in the process.
Stay out of the boonies. A guy I know had deer spotters goofing around lighting up his house. He walked out on to the porch in his BVDs and emptied his .38 at the car. Hundred to one he’d hit anyone, but he scared the crap out of them.
Also, depending on timing, shining a light at deer is illegal (at least in PA).
Presumably, a person as monumentally stupid and/or socially inept as your “friend” is also dumb enough to tell the cops that his intended result was one of the above. What kind of charges could a (sufficiently irritated and motivated) prosecutor bring to bear against a malicious man-child who admits that he was trying to “cause general chaos” or “piss off several people severely”? Disturbing the peace? Disorderly conduct? Douchebagging without a license? Results will vary by jurisdiction, but there’s only one way to find out for sure…
I suggest a trailer park in west Texas or central Florida for your friend’s first experimental run.
Among the other laws and reasons for not doing this people have mentioned, if you were ‘driving around’ doing this it would also be a moving violation.
Even if you found some place in the country with no laws on the books to handle this situation the police aren’t going to look kindly on this and you could find yourself in jail overnight till they have time to confirm they have nothing to prosecute you on.
That’s the spirit!! Me personally, I like to surprise my friends when they are driving (and I’m in the passenger seat) by slipping a plastic grocery bag over their heads! Man, good times! I love my friends!!
In New York State, it would be an easy conviction for “Disorderly Conduct” at the very least. A case can easily be made by any competent prosecutor for more severe charges, which I will leave as an exercise for the reader. But, as you say, to get caught, it would require doing it repeatedly, in the same place and time, “to get caught.” Or, as you point out here:
… pulling “the prank” once, in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Time to start contemplating ducking bullets, here, Diamonds. In my misspent youth, I found out the hard way that people will shoot at you. They shot illegally. I still had to duck, because a bullet in your head still kills you, regardless of it’s legality, but that would not have saved me from the results of a bullet in my head. Pissing people off can get you killed, and you’re just as dead, even if the shooting was illegal, just as you would be if it was legal.
… and God help you, because, God knows, no one else will. Let alone the cop who has to respond to the complaints. Continuing from the post I’m quoting:
You ain’t gonna see a reasonable response, because you ain’t dealing with a reasonable person. Diamonds is an idiot. No “reason” is involved in any of her thinking. Oh well…
You know what would be the ULTIMATE prank? If he drove around at night, pulling in to people’s driveways, shining the light into their houses and honking his horn. Ehh? Funny and smart. Problem solved. Brilliant, if I don’t mind saying. Diamonds, just being near you has rubbed off on me.