Want to Scare the Bejesus Out of Your Kid With a Fake Call From the Cops? There’s an App for That.

Hey
parents, aren’t there days when you wish you could have a cop call
and yell at your kids for you? Who doesn’t occasionally want to
invoke fear of a SWAT team busting down the door when Junior just
won’t pick up his Legos?

Now you can! Get your very own call from the cops for 99 cents.
A new app will generate a fake
call from “Sergeant Friendly” admonishing your kid by name for
failing to do things like sleep in their own bed or clean up their
toys. (There’s a free version, but it doesn’t have a full library
of nags.)

“Hello, this is the police department,” the call begins after a
computer-generated voice bleats the child’s name. “I heard you
haven’t been eating all of your food lately….I’ll be checking in
on you later to see that you’re eating all of your food. I have to
go now and catch some bad guys.” And then there a police
siren.  

According to the press release I received today, this is the
genesis of this not-at-all creepy app:

I was visiting a mall with my two youngest children when both of
them began to misbehave.  I was embarrassed by their
behavior and was willing to do anything to get them to
listen.  I told them that the mall police were watching
them on the security cameras and that they needed to be good. At
that moment, I thought to myself, how nice would it be to have a
personalized phone call from a police officer to correct or reward
your child’s behavior. 

I contacted my wife to tell her my idea and she thought it was
brilliant. After giving it some thought, the app was developed and
now it’s available on Apple and Android devices worldwide for
FREE.  The character I created is Sergeant
Friendly.  He is a police officer that children can look
up to as a role model.  I didn’t want to scare the
children, so I made him very approachable and
likable.  The first time I tried the app with my
children, ages 3 and 5, they corrected their behavior
immediately.  About 10 minutes later, I arranged a second
call to them so that Sergeant Friendly could praise them for being
good.  They were ecstatic and could not wait to tell me
what Sergeant Friendly had said to them on the phone.
“Daddy, Sergeant Friendly just called me and told me that he
is proud of me for being good”. 

And the kicker: The creator of the app is a police
officer. 

The funny thing is that I happen to be a Friendly Police Officer
myself with over 18 years of experience.  I hope your
child loves the app just as much as mine do.  Thank
you.

On a far more grim note, here’s a reminder about what can happen
when
parents actually call the police on their kids.