Panic in the Streets! Sheer Panic!

Via Gawker comes a tale of pedo-panic in San Francisco:

Everyone knows the only thing people do with their cell phones is take weird sex pictures. When moms saw a man lurking around San Francisco’s Mountain Lake Park apparently taking cell phone pics of their kids, they leaped into action.

That is, they took pictures of him, wrote about him on the local parents’ e-mail list, and tipped off the SFPD. That’s parenting in action!

It’s also utterly groundless, according to the San Francisco Examiner:

Police identified the man last week and visited his home Monday, according to a police update. He was “cooperative,” “unguarded,” and “surprised at being the subject of a police investigation,” according to a report from Richmond Police Station Capt. Richard Corriea.

“He allowed officers to examine his cell phone and his laptop computer,” the report said. “He stated that he hadn’t taken any photographs. He explained that he was looking at his phone’s screen while using the telephone’s stopwatch feature as part of his workout.”

So, look, parents: Yes, there are bad people out there. And yes, you need to be a little bit wary of a stranger’s intentions. But not everyone is out to molest your kids. And sometimes you can even clear things up by, like, you know, talking to the stranger yourself and seeing what he’s up to. So just chill out next time, alright?

And remember that you, your family members, and the people your child regularly interacts with (teachers, priests) are much more likely to fondle, kidnap, or kill your kid than some dude doing pull-ups at the playground.