Portlin

“A young Portland couple called it Valentine’s Day role playing. Police called it disorderly conduct, saying it created public alarm as well as taking up the time of at least nine patrol cars for 20 minutes Tuesday.

That’s how long police spent checking out an alarmed 911 caller’s report of a possible kidnapping. The caller reported seeing a car leaving a grocery parking lot with a naked woman tied up in the back with duct tape over her mouth.

Sgt. Pete Simpson says officers flooded the area and alerted Washington state law enforcement in case the car headed north on Interstate 5.

When police located the car shortly before 1 p.m., Simpson says a 31-year-old man gave officers the role-playing explanation. Police confirmed that account with the man’s 26-year-old girlfriend. Simpson says both were arrested for second-degree disorderly conduct and booked into jail.

Typically, Simpson says the district attorney’s office might drop such a case from a misdemeanor to a violation, like a traffic ticket.”

“It was dubbed the ‘flash mob’ bill when it got a hearing Monday at the Oregon Legislature — a proposal to make it a felony to summon people by Twitter or email to commit a crime at a designated place.

Now it’s more like flash-in-the-pan.

‘It’s dead,’ said Sen. Floyd Prozanski, the Eugene Democrat who, because he holds the gavel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, gets to decide such things. Yet 11 Republicans and one Democrat signed onto Senate Bill 1534, which would have created the crime of ‘aggravated solicitation.’”

You still can’t buy liquor in grocery stores, though.