As is the case of that 12 year old who was pointing a very real looking fake gun at strangers in Cleveland.
Last week, some protestors from Ferguson bussed to Cleveland and created some havoc with their protests. There's a police chief in Cleveland who thinks it's a peaceful protest when traffic is disrupted and people can't get to holiday activities. There are parts of the east side of Cleveland that never recovered from the busing riots back in the '60s and '70s.
Speaking anecdotally, most people I know have made it a point NOT to go into the city this holiday season. And it's hard to understand why the minority community isn't speaking up forcefully supporting how the kind of neighborhood policing that isn't being done when police are diverted to babysitting out of town, out of control agitators.
The reason I'm saying it's worse is that now people don't think the situation will end until something horrible happens and law authority loses all control.
In general, if it would gratuitously alarm the public, it isn’t such a wonderful idea. That was such a bad prank to play and it is tragic it ended up like it did.