*** WATCH *** Man found alone after reporting intruder with gun...

HYANNIS – [HN NOTES & MULLINGS ON THE MATTER] – As you will see and hear in the following HN Video, Barnstable Police patrol officers responded to an apartment early this morning after a man reported an armed person inside trying to kill him. He reportedly told officers the man had a gun. After a computer check of past calls for service, responding officers learned the same man reportedly called the other day, allegedly under the influence of drugs and behaving paranoid.

So, what was really going on this morning? Responding officers were beginning to consider this “murderous man with a gun” report to possibly be some sort of hallucination – ‘some kind of drug induced psychosis.’

Nonetheless, one never knows for sure these days…

Officers called for a Hyannis FD ambulance to standby, as this was beginning to look like a drug induced “medical” situation.

But then a patrol officer located a large, random live round of ammunition outside the same apartment building and one had to wonder, “what’s really going on here?” And to top it off, the man – who ended up being all by himself after all – initially refused to step out of the apartment because he did not believe the 7 or 8 uniformed men and women surrounding his place were actually real cops.

Officers eventually convinced the man to step out, placed him in handcuffs and loaded him into an ambulance to eventually be evaluated at Cape Cod Hospital. [NOTE: We will likely never know the outcome of this situation because of what I call “HIPPOpotamus laws”… perhaps more appropriately known as “HIPAA LAWS” (“The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 is a federal law that required the creation of national standards to protect sensitive patient health information from being disclosed without the patient’s consent or knowledge.”)]

In my opinion, Hippopotamus laws are generally a good idea… most of the time… but some have valid criticisms and questions regarding so-called “HIPAA laws;” one being, for example, “When does the general public have a right to know when a neighbor is a genuine, imminent threat to the community?”

The large round of ammunition was documented and collected as evidence. (NOTE: We don’t know for certain if the bullet found nearby is actually connected to this morning’s commotion…)

Officers are investigating the situation…

But the really unnerving thing (for me at least) is that this type of call is NOT unusual in our current drug and gun culture.

The following HN Video highlights the call with police audio and snapshots. Some of the images are blurred for the time being… stay tuned… [DEVELOPING]

[HN VIDEO – PRESS PLAY]