Edison P.D. deems attempted luring report a fake
Police: Children will not be charged for misleading officers
BY TOM CAIAZZA
Staff Writer

EDISON - After extensive questioning from the Edison Police Department, Thursday's incident regarding the attempted luring of several township children was deemed a hoax, according to Lt. Joseph Shannon.

The incident, in which four township juveniles claimed a man in a red Dodge truck had attempted to lure them under the guise of looking for the man's lost son, turned out to be a false report, but not before it yielded a full investigation from the Edison Police Department.

"It was reported that there was an attempted luring with a red Dodge SUV," Shannon said on Monday. "It was four of our youths that reported it."

Shannon said that detectives questioned the three boys and one girl who had reported that during a 20-minute period, a man in a red truck approached the children and asked them to help him find his missing son. At the time, the children all reported that the man did not show his face, and that they could not make a positive identification of the perpetrator.

"Through further investigation by some of our detectives, it was determined that the incident never took place," Shannon said.

Shannon said that at the time the report was filed, the Edison Police Department took the necessary steps to investigate what has become a growing problem in the area.

"We take any report of any attempted luring of our children very seriously," Shannon said. "We deployed a lot of manpower into that initiative there to try to apprehend the person responsible for doing this, because we want to protect all of our children."

Shannon expressed disappointment that the children wasted the police department's time and resources in investigating the hoax.

"Then, lo and behold, as the investigation unfolded," Shannon said, "it was somewhat disheartening to find out that the incident didn't take place and it was a waste of a lot of man hours."

While the fact that it was a hoax and there was not someone out there attempting to lure children into their car was comforting to Shannon, the idea that the police spent time that could have been used for other purposes was unfortunate.

"The good part, thank God, is there is not some guy out there trying to do that," Shannon said. "Obviously, the downside of that is we did exhaust quite a bit of man hours, which any department would do; we have better need to use our resources than investigating incidents that never took place."

Shannon said that because of their ages, the children involved would not be charged with a crime; however, their punishment would be a joint effort between the department and their parents.

"There won't be any charges," Shannon said.

There have been several instances of attempted luring in the Edison/Metuchen area in the past few months.