Two US Police Officers lost a court appeal last week in Los Angeles after an incident that occurred in April 2017.
The LAPD cops reportedly ignored a nearby call out to a robbery and were later caught out on tape searching for Pokémon characters through the Pokémon GO app while on patrol.
Louis Lozano and Eric Mitchell lost their jobs during a ruling in 2018 in a California court and had recently lodged an appeal for their jobs back.
CNN revealed that the rule break occurred on a Saturday afternoon when a radio call for "a 211 - robbery - in progress" had been sent out.
A Macy's department store, located in downtown Los Angeles, was being robbed by multiple people.
Court documents explained that another officer, Capt. Darnell Davenport, overheard the call over the radio as he was en route to another crime scene.
However, it just so happened that he was close to the Macy's that was being robbed and saw another police car - that of Lozano and Mitchell - was parked in an alley.
Davenport assumed they hadn’t heard the call and so he attended the scene, however, the patrol supervisor on that day then requested them as a backup for the robbery.
He got no response, and later realised that the robbery at Macy’s wasn’t the first call out they had ignored.
When questioned on the matter, Lozano and Mitchell said they couldn’t hear the radio over the surrounding noise of the streets.
The judge then requested access to the vehicle's digital video recording system, which revealed that the two officers were actually playing the once-popular game, Pokémon GO, for 20 minutes.
Reports explained that the audio heard the pair speaking about a Snorlax that was nearby - one of the Pokémon characters - and so they were trying to capture it.
The recording overheard Mitchell finding the creature and heard him shouting "Got 'em".
Moments later, another character - called a Togetic - appeared, and the two took off in the patrol car to capture it.
Mitchell was quoted as saying: "Don't run away. Don't run away."
He also reportedly said: "Holy crap, man. This thing is fighting the crap out of me " followed by "the guys are going to be so jealous."
In 2018, the officers were fired after a judge ruled their actions were a form of misconduct and were in violation of the public's trust.
Their recent appeal on this decision was then denied by a Superior Court on Friday last week.
