LOS ANGELES — LAPD officer and gaming hobbyist Michael Thompson has allegedly been shutting off his computer monitor every time he shoots in the popular new online shooter Bodycam.
“There was a player-involved shooting and unfortunately some people were eliminated,” said Officer Thompson. “I wish I could tell you what exactly happened, but the second I saw the enemy team my computer monitor stopped working entirely. I heard gunshots and returned fire. I wasn’t able to get my monitor up and running again until after the shooting had stopped.”
However, other gamers present paint a different picture of the events.
“We were in a game of Team Deathmatch, on the same team,” explained gamer Rebecca Davis, who was online at the scene of the incident. “The match had just started. We hadn’t even seen the enemy team yet before he started freaking out, yelling ‘Gun! Gun!’ into the mic and firing into the walls and ceiling. He teamkilled two of us. I started yelling at him and he made the excuse that his computer monitor shut off on its own. I’d be more likely to believe him if the exact same thing didn’t happen in the next round. Or the round after.”
Thompson reportedly repeated this behavior until his team lost the match. Members of the opposing team also noticed something was amiss.
“We were gonna just all go camp in one room and wait for them to come to us,” said Jordan White, a member of the opposing team. “We were just chilling in there when we heard all these gunshots. By the time we went out to investigate, half of them were dead already.”
While many in his team were understandably upset, Thompson quickly jumped to his own defense.
“This is a high-stress game,” explained Thompson. “Danger lurks around every corner. Every day I log in there is no guarantee that my character is gonna make it out alive. I’m not gonna stop and check that my computer monitor is working every time I get shot at.”
At press time, the LAPD conducted an internal investigation into the claims made against Officer Thompson and determined he had done nothing wrong.
