By now you have certainly heard of the sad and sick story of parents who used their child in a hoax that was designed to help them promote a new reality series they planned.

After days of denying that they faked the possibility of their son floating away in a homemade mylar balloon over two counties in Colorado, causing all manner of rescue attempts that could have hurt others, or taken away resources that were needed by others.

The boy was found in his attic at home, hiding in a box, but under questioning revealed that it was "done for a show." That is when the hoax began to seriously unravel.

Now there are possibilities of both misdemeanor and felony charges against the parents, which we hope would be followed through to the maximum.

We would also suggest that Colorado's version of Child Protective Services do an investigation of this family. Any parent who would use his son in such a manner, would do almost anything. True, the son was never in danger, but the ensuing furor will no doubt leave him some psychological marks that will not easily go away.

This is a high profile case, but our police and fire officials must deal with false reports on a regular basis, each of which strain already limited resources for local needs.

Most of the time the false reports are not maliciously done. These are things reported by a well-meaning member of the public who is trying to be of help. This takes up a lot of time, but it cannot be helped. We believe our police and fire departments appreciated public involvement, even when the report does not check out.

But other times a person willfully makes a false report — someone will pull a fire alarm, or make a report of a crime that has not actually been committed. This costs all of us money and deprives us of the resources that otherwise might be spent usefully.

We don't know if our fire department has ever calculated the cost, including equipment and man-hours spent with the running of each false alarm. We do know that ambulances and fire trucks cannot be cheap to operate and they are certainly not cheap to replace.

But fire false alarms are at least quickly determined not to be real. In the case of false reports to the police, days can be spent trying to unravel the lie, much as it took days to unravel the Colorado case.

Unfortunately, false reports to the police are far more common. Sometimes they are made for revenge, sometimes they are made to cover an embarrassing situation, often they are made to shift the responsibility for an incident from the caller to an unknown person.

We probably don't know exactly how many of these false reports our police receive because a few people probably get away with it. We would suspect that number is low, but it happens.

Think twice before you call our public safety officials about any situation other than the obvious fire or crime that has occurred or is occurring right before you.

False reports are costly and not just for you. There are real criminal charges that can and almost certainly will be filed. Don't get yourself into that situation.

If you need to be convinced, just follow what happens to the family in Colorado. It is not going to be pretty.