[chris]

A resident of Arizona's northwest Valley set off a bomb squad response in early 2008 after he called 911 to report he had found a bazooka, and the dispatcher who answered told him not to worry about it, according to the Arizona Republic.

The man reached the regional police communications center in Surprise, a suburb northwest of Phoenix, and told the call taker he had come across a rocket launcher. He described it as looking like "the terrorist ones that blow up the planes that you see on TV," according to a recording of the call.

Rather than treat the report as a possible live explosive, the dispatcher assured the caller the device posed no immediate danger. "That's only going to blow up if you pull the trigger," the dispatcher said, according to the recording. The call taker then directed the man to phone the El Mirage police non-emergency line.

The caller did not do that. Instead, he drove the device to a police station, according to the Republic. The delivery prompted an explosive ordnance disposal team from nearby Luke Air Force Base to respond and examine it.

The launcher turned out to be inert, and no one was hurt, the newspaper reported.

Surprise police officials said the dispatcher's advice had been a mistake and that the call taker did not recognize the danger a live rocket could pose. The department said it was reviewing how the call was handled and that the dispatcher would receive additional training, according to the Republic.

The recording later circulated among emergency-dispatch professionals as a training example, posted by Dispatch Magazine On-Line, a trade publication that has covered public-safety communications since 1982.