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Don’t Play Pokemon GO At The Holocaust Museum, Walk Off A Cliff, Drive, Or Get Stabbed While Playing

By Coburn Palmer
Published on: 11:10 PST, Jul 14, 2016

Pokemon GO is sweeping the nation, but some users of the augmented reality game are playing badly and that’s giving the phenomenon a bad name.

Two San Diego men walked off a cliff this week, an Anaheim man was stabbed in a park, at least two different men have crashed into trees and newly licensed drivers have been reported playing the game while on the road.

The Pokemon GO cell phone video game is only a week old, but already players have started to risk their lives and the safety of others to capture the elusive creatures, Anaheim police Sgt. Luis Correa told NBC Los Angeles.

“If you are going to play do it safely, and not lose sight of what you’re doing. Be aware of your surroundings. Do it in a manner that’s safe so you don’t get into trouble.”

The global phenomenon of Pokemon GO is now more popular than Netflix, Tinder and Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat, but it hasn’t all been sunshine and rainbows.

The augmented virtual reality game lets players use their cell phones to search, capture and train virtual Pokemon characters hiding around their everyday environment. Cell phone cameras display the anime characters over real world features like tables, chairs and trees.

The problem comes when players pay more attention to the Pokemon GO video game than the real world, Sgt. Correa told the LA Times.

“Your focus should be on what’s in front of you, so you don’t lose sight of what is happening.”

In North San Diego County, two men fell off a cliff while playing Pokemon GO; they fell 75 to 100 feet down several stories of crumbling sandstone cliffs and had to be taken to local trauma centers after suffering moderate injuries.

Then, miles north in Anaheim, a man in his late 20’s was stabbed multiple times by a group of teenagers who confronted him in an abandoned park around 12:30 in the morning. Police say the group of attackers didn’t lure the victim into the park, they found him there and attacked him.

Two other men were carjacked earlier this week while playing Pokemon GO in their car and two San Francisco siblings had their cell phones stolen while they were playing the virtual reality game.

In Pennsylvania, three Pokemon GO players found themselves locked inside a cemetery after it closed for the night and needed to call police to get them out.

In St. Louis, police sent out a public alert after learning thieves were using a PokeStop as a way to lure unsuspecting victims into their trap.

In San Luis Obispo County, there’s a sober living facility, Sunny Acres, that’s been designated as a PokeStop where players can get free in-game items, facility manager Dan De Vaul told the LA Times.

“I have no idea what Pokemon is. I have no idea who put the stop, if it was sabotage, because we don’t want kids showing up here.”

That’s not to mention the holocaust museum in San Francisco that’s trying to opt out of Pokemon GO after discovering it had been designated as a PokeStop in the augmented reality game.

Andrew Hollinger, the communication’s director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum told the Washington Post, his facility wasn’t an appropriate place to play the virtual reality game.

“Playing the game is not appropriate in the museum, which is a memorial to the victims of Nazism. We are trying to find out if we can get the museum excluded from the game.”

The issue highlights the complications of layering a digital world over a physical one and brings up questions about personal property and the control that a video game company can have over other people.

Pokemon GO urges players to walk around their surroundings to gather the virtual creatures that can then be trained and fought in a PokeGym, but law enforcement agencies across the country are urging players to remain aware of their surroundings.

Pokemon GO is available as a smartphone app for players in Australia, New Zealand, the U.S., Germany and the U.K.

[Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images]

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