A tale from my Alma Mater, via DBA:
De-Sanitizing the Police Blotter
The police did not determine her error through close and careful questioning of the jogger, which would have established that she was observing 4 Valley Road, whereas she lived farther down Valley Road at another number. The police did not determine her error by noticing the absence of evidence supporting the hypothesis that this was a burglary in progress — there was no getaway car, no damage to windows or doors and no suspicious activity occurring within the house. The police did not determine her error through the application of inductive knowledge which would indicate the unlikelihood that a burglary would be in progress on a Sunday morning in a small, college town in rural New Hampshire. The police did not even establish her error by a combination of these factors. The police “quickly established” her error by laying an unannounced, intimidatory siege to our house, accompanied by screams telling me to come to the door with my hands up. They then proceeded to draw a gun on me that was menacingly pointed at my chest as I stood there in cargo shorts, t-shirt and bare feet! After further screaming and questioning, the police finally realized their mistake — 10 minutes later the officer who pulled the gun came over and apologized.