Unintended consequences

Consider:
• In North San Diego County, California, firefighters rescued two men who fell several stories off the crumbling sandstone bluff in Encinitas, according to authorities. The men, who were in their early 20s, were playing “Pokémon Go” at the time and likely were led to the cliff when they were trying to catch characters from the new, wildly popular smartphone-app game.
• Police in Nashua, New Hampshire, said a man’s body was recovered from Salmon Brook after it was spotted by someone playing Pokémon Go near Nashua's Rotary Park, according to the local ABC News affiliate. After the body was found last Thursday afternoon, dive teams went into the water to retrieve it, and Rotary Park became a Pokémon Go hotspot that is now notorious. Police said they do not think foul play is involved.
• Rather than fighting monsters when he arrived at a Pokémon gym Thursday morning, a 26-year-old Milford, Michigan man instead found himself in handcuffs, according to the Detroit Free Press.
Police said the village resident was riding his bike about 10:30 a.m., looking at his smartphone in order to follow along with a map in the Pokémon Go game, when — perhaps unknowingly — he arrived at the police station on Atlantic Street.
The Milford Police Station, like many others, is designated by Pokémon Go as a "gym," where users’ virtual monsters fight against other users’ virtual monsters.
It didn’t take long after the cyclist arrived — clad in pajama pants and a T-shirt — for him to realize the Pokémon gym he’d been seeking was also the local police station, where he was wanted on a warrant.
“A couple of our officers looked out the window and saw him standing out by the flagpole,” said Police Chief Tom Lindberg, noting after numerous run-ins that police recognized the individual immediately and went out to greet — and arrest — the distracted gamer.

‘You’re still in the real world’

These incidents come as law enforcement agencies across the nation are reporting a plethora of Pokémon-related "attacks" and odd happenings since the game was released earlier this month.
“Death by Pokémon is coming,” warns Gerry Beyer, Governor Preston E. Smith Regents Professor of Law at Texas Tech University School of Law. As Beyer told Fox News. “Pokémon users will have all sorts of accidents as they use the program while walking, biking, and driving.”
“As you battle, train, and capture your Pokémon, just remember you’re still in the real world,” warned the San Francisco Police Department, in a Facebook post reported by Nox News.

Taking leave of their senses

Here's a list of other strange occurrences related to Pokémon Go activities:
• Steven Cary was driving in upstate Auburn recently while playing Pokémon Go, according to the central New York publication Syracuse.com. He looked down at his phone to check the app and crashed into a tree — breaking his ankle and totaling his brother’s car.
Cary discussed the accident while sitting on a couch in his mother’s Auburn home — a knee-high cast on his right leg and a two-inch string of stitches on his right elbow.
“Momentary lapse of reason,” Cary said, reflecting on the crash in an interview with Syracuse.com. “I can’t blame the game for my own stupid move.”
• The Church of England, according to the BBC News, is throwing open its doors to players of the online game by making some of its churches "Pokéstops" for players to visit. The augmented reality game — which is attracting millions of new players — involves finding virtual Pokémon characters in different real locations.
The Church has said the game was “a good way to start a conversation that may lead on to other things.”
• The Star Telegram reports that a North Texas teen is recovering after being bitten by a venomous snake while playing the Pokemon GO game in a park.
Lane Smith, 18, said he saw something on the walkway in his peripheral vision and thought he was perhaps stepping on a stick — until it bit him on the right big toe, according to a hospital employee who interviewed him.
The skin surrounding the bite mark initially had signs of redness and swelling that can indicate at least a small amount of venom had penetrated the skin, officials said.
Smith called his mom and told her about the wound, and she directed him to come home right away. She took him to Flower Mound Emergency Center, where it was determined that he needed to be transferred to a nearby medical center.
• The Toledo Blade reported that a man and a woman were arrested near the Toledo Zoo’s tiger exhibit after jumping the fence to play Pokémon Go.
“It wasn’t the most responsible thing to do, but hey, gotta catch ‘em all,” Robin Bartholomy said in an interview while clutching a stuffed Marill, an aqua mouse Pokémon.
• Two Quebec City police officers suffered minor injures when a Pokémon Go player backed his car into their police cruiser, according to the website Slash Gear. The cops said they were observing the car, which was driving erratically though a parking lot, when the driver suddenly backed into their cruiser. The driver was — you guessed it — playing Pokémon Go, apparently hunting for monsters in the lot.
• A 19-year-old woman in rural Wyoming came across something far more serious than a Pokémon character while she was out playing Pokémon GO near the Big Wind River. “I was trying to find water Pokémon,” she told CNN. While hunting for them on the riverbank, she came across the corpse of a man lying face down in the water. Local police believe the man may have drowned.

Around the world

The Washington Post has reported on the international response:
• The deputy chief of Cairo’s Al-Azhar, the most important scholarly institution of Sunni Islam, has declared Pokémon Go to be as illicit as alcohol.
• The Israeli military warned its soldiers not to use the app, a sieve of information, on army bases.
• Andrei Polyakov, a Cossack leader in St. Petersburg, Russia’s second-biggest city, said and his comrades would seek a government ban of the game.
Meanwhile, the New York Police Department has issued a list of safety tips for Pokémon Go, including:
• Do not drive or ride your bike, skateboard, or other device while interacting with the app.
• Do not trespass on private property.
• Be aware and tell your kids about “stranger danger.”

End game

And lastly, there’s this:
A 24-year-old man from New Zealand has quit his job to become a full-time Pokémon hunter, he told The Guardian in an interview published last Thursday. According to the report, the man, Tom Currie, plans to spend two months exploring New Zealand on 20 bus trips, as he attempts to catch all 151 Pokémon available in the game.
“I wanted to have an adventure,” Currie told The Guardian. “I have been working for six years and I was desperate for a break. And Pokémon gave me the chance to live that dream.”