Police officers, weapons in hand, wait in front of a small house in Florida. Then a man appears on the steps. Quickly handcuffed, the latter was clearly stunned by the situation. “We received a call that a man had killed his wife, tied up his children and threatened to set the house on fire.”A police officer explains in this filmed scene.

But in reality none of this happened and the handcuffed person was A “pushing”, a phone hoax led to the deployment of a massive police force. A very common phenomenon that has been repeated hundreds of times in recent months in the four corners of America. This kind of situation is dangerous. In Ohio, six years ago, an officer shot and killed an unarmed man. How to explain the origin of this practice and how to stop it? The FBI recently created a unit dedicated to these hoaxes.