Don't sell them short, this is an old tactic and very effective.
Many years ago people called the PD complaining of gunfire at ~8PM from the local gun club. When the dispatcher told them that it was the police qualifying, they didn't care and made a stink. The Chief stopped all night qualification shooting. My late Chief told me that people in another part of town were calling in "gun shots heard" when people slammed their car trunk lids. Eventually they used all those complaints to put forth a town meeting article to ban all shooting in the town except at the gun clubs. Only a handful of gun club members lived in town (and most couldn't be bothered attending a town meeting) and the opposition marshaled enough people to get it passed. And this was long before Al Whore invented the Internet and social media was a telephone or a letter.
