I will be the first to say that I missed the actual broadcast of this piece of news tonight (I've more or less put my TV out of commission). A video about the case is viewable from this page. There is also a story about what happened.

First of all, I think it's a miracle that they actually found the man responsible for the phone call. I was kind of shocked to read that phone calls like this have been happening for a decade and that such calls have, in several cases, led to sexual abuse.

What I thought was interesting was this:

Gardere goes on to say that it was no accident that caller was targeting fast food restaurants.

"Everything is by the book," he explained. "This is how you serve it. This is exactly how you do it. You follow the book — you're OK. I believe he picked fast food restaurants because he knew, once you got them away from that book, once it was something outside the manual or the procedures, they would be lost."

...

This can't be entirely far from the truth. Companies such as McDonald's thrive on automation and procedure in all facets. While there is a large degree of automation involved with most aspects of working for a company like McDonald's, what does it say about the scope of knowledge about legal rights within the United States if someone can call a restaurant pretending to be a cop and the rest of the people subsequently claim to see no reason why they shouldn't do exactly what this voice tells them to.

Maybe the level of deference to authority has gone completely overboard...or perhaps these bogus phone calls have only resulted in sexual assault because the people involved were really just that ignorant.

But honestly, having worked in supervising positions in a variety of jobs, including fast food, I cannot imagine thinking it would be legally okay to strip search an employee because someone on the phone told me to. Nor can I imagine leaving someone sitting in an office, naked and humiliated, for hours while under the pretense that an officer was going to be arriving shortly.

It's very easy for people to talk about the variety of freedoms that citizens of the United States are guaranteed--but what good are those freedoms to people who don't understand what they mean?

And none of that even begins to delve into what should be a basic understanding of human rights...