I’m glad this ended up the way it did — you could have seen it go very, very badly. — Dan

If you’ve seen enough movies or TV shows involving bank heists, you probably know that many banks have silent alarms. When the bad guy comes up to the counter demanding money undue to him, the teller can hit a button, alerting police to the crime in progress. But, to ensure that the criminal doesn’t flee (or worse, start shooting), there’s no audible indicator in the bank itself telling anyone about the heist. It’s a good way to keep everyone safe and stop the theft at the same time.

But there’s a downside to the silent alarm: emergency responders have to enter a potentially very dangerous situation without a lot of information. The police don’t know if the person robbing the bank is an amateur in a trench coat with a cartoonishly large bag, or if they’re likely to come up against well-armed, highly-trained professional thieves. The cops have to proceed with caution for both themselves and the innocents inside.

Which is why, in 2013, a silent alarm caused a standoff in Los Angeles — even though no one was actually at risk.

The incident began when members of the LAPD arrived at the offices of Robotoki, makers of the very popular video game franchise “Call of Duty.” The police were responding to a silent alarm — something had occurred in Robotoki’s offices that required a police response, and no one working in the building at the time could call in with more details. When authorities arrived, they immediately saw that the problem was bigger than they’d hoped. Here’s what they were met with:

Yes, that’s a sniper, masked and in camouflaged, peering out the window and all but ready to fire. He’s playing the role of lookout, suggesting that he’s not acting alone. He’s not someone that a police officer with a standard-issue revolver can handle — preventing the harm like someone above can cause requires careful planning and judgment. So the LAPD proceeded with caution.

For the next 15 minutes, four officers, arms drawn, slowly made their way into the building, clearing floors one at a time. They found that the building was virtually empty — almost everyone had gone home for the night — until they reached the office of Robert Bowling, a creative strategist that had formerly worked on the game. The police informed Bowling of the threat, took him into protective custody, and continued to search the building for other potential gunmen. Finally, they reached the sniper pictured above — and realized that this wasn’t an armed man at all. It was a life-sized statue of Ghost, a character from the Call of Duty games.

Bowling explained to gaming publication Polygon what happened:

The panic button, Bowling noted, was newly installed because “as game developers receive their fair share of death threats.” (While the Robotoki offices hadn’t received any such threats, Bowling’s team had at his former employer.) The police took the false alarm in stride — no one was fined or otherwise punished. Rather, per Polygon, “Once they realized Bowling was neither a threat nor a hostage, discussion fell to Bowling’s line of work and the ordeal ended with a round of video games” — giving proof to the assertion about boys finding buttons and wanting to push them.

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Today’s Bonus fact: A year after the incident above, Robotoki’s officers were, actually, broken into — and again, Bowling was the only one in the office. And this time, again, the police arrived to find no actual threat at hand. But this wasn’t a false alarm. As Engadget reported, “Bowling played a heroic role in an attempted robbery last night at the Robotoki offices, scaring off a pair of burglars during a late-night shift. An on-site security video captures the dramatic encounter in its entirety [but sadly for us, the video is no longer online]. In a matter of seconds, the office's front doors were smashed in, and the burglars entered. Upon seeing Bowling leap toward them, the robbers then beat a hasty retreat. ‘Unfortunately for them, I work late,’ Bowling quipped.”

From the Archives: How the Navy is Becoming Millennial-Friendly: Lots of would-be sailors play video games. So the Navy is using video game controllers to help them fire real weapons.

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And thanks! — Dan