Walmart Gang Initiation?

Let's clear the air: there is no known murder plot in the next few days involving Wal-Mart, gangs and murder.

You can stop calling the police, e-mailing your relatives and haranguing already overworked crime reporters for not warning the public.

South Florida authorities say they've been inundated with questions about a possible gang initiation in which anywhere from one to three women will be murdered in a Wal-Mart parking lot on Thursday in Broward County. Or ,is it Palm Beach County? Maybe, Miami-Dade? How about Tallahassee? None of the above, police say.

"No, no, no," said Jim Leljedal, spokesman for the Broward Sheriff's Office. "These hoaxes and urban legends have been around forever. Now with the Internet they seem to travel with lightning speed."

The Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office put out a similar message.

"According to some sources, it appears to be a rumor which began in 2005 from the Memphis, Tenn., area which over the course of the past two nights has become more widespread throughout Florida," wrote Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Teri Barbera in an e-mail to media outlets.

These hoaxes are nurtured by well-meaning folks looking out for each other. You heard about the guys who hide under your car and clip your Achilles tendon to rob you? How about gang wannabes who drive with their headlights off and attack people who flash their lights at them? Or the guys who steal your car when you retrieve a flier from your rear windshield?

Such dire warnings are commonplace, especially in the e-mail age, says Barbara Mikkelson, who with her husband, David, founded perhaps the best urban legends reference on the Internet, www.snopes.com, named by her husband in honor of a fictional family in William Faulkner's writings.

"They contribute to this growing conviction that we live in a truly dangerous world where every stranger is a potential rapist, murderer or gang member," she said. "Too many of these scary stories do work to convince people that everything is a huge potential danger."

But more often than not, such tales are untrue.

Here are some warning signs of a possible hoax or urban legend: e-mails that tell you to forward them to everyone; unverifiable authors or sources of information; stories that are outlandish but within the realm of possibility; stories that, if true, would have likely generated significant news coverage, but have not; and an unusual insistence that the story told is actually true.

Mikkelson said that people need to use common sense, be aware of their surroundings and not take unnecessary risks. But know the difference between being "prudently cautious and being out-and-out fearful," she said. "One is wise, one isn't."

source="http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/palmbeach/sfl-031809-gang-hoax,0,6556136.story"