6-Year-Old Calls 911 to Tattle on Dad for Running Red Light

— -- As parents, we want to teach our children to follow the rules and to be good citizens, right? Well one Quincy, Massachusetts, family, apparently taught their son a little too well.

Little 6-year-old Robbie Richardson called 911 on his dad when he “ran a red light.”

“911 what’s your emergency?,” Quincy Police Dispatcher Michael Bowes asks when he answers the call, a recording of which was obtained by ABC News.

“Um, Daddy went past a red light,” the dutiful kindergartner explained. “Daddy went past a red light. He has a black truck. He was in the brand new car, my mommy's car, and we had to go to the car wash, and then he went past the red light."

Bowes then asked to speak to Robbie’s father, who calmly apologized.

“Oh no, I apologize,” Robbie’s dad, Mike Richardson, said after getting on the line.

“No problem, as long as everything’s all set,” Bowes replies.

“Yep, no, we’re good. Thank you,” said Richardson.

Richardson was not ticketed, but was a little embarrassed thanks to his own junior police officer.

“Since he turned 6 in February, he’s said he wants to be a police officer, so in his head he was doing the right thing,” Robbie’s mom, Joleen McDonald, told ABC News.

And, as it turns out, Richardson didn't even break the law. He made a right on red, but in Robbie’s mind that was simply not acceptable.

“It was fine. It didn’t say, ‘No turn on red’ or anything, but Robbie was convinced that red means stop so you do not go,” his mom explained.

“In his eyes, Daddy was breaking the law. He told Mike when they were in the car wash, ‘Daddy, I’m gonna call the police on you,’ and Mike brushed it off and didn’t think anything of it,” she added. “We were outside cooking on the grill later and we thought Robbie went inside to use the bathroom and he came back out to on us the back porch with the police on the phone.”

Although adorable, Bowes has received stranger phone calls than this one while on the job.

“He’s had a lot of calls,” Captain John Dougan, public information officer for the Quincy Police, said. “He even had one years ago when his house was burning down. Someone in his family called 911 about his own house burning down and he answered the call. So that was probably the strangest.”

As for their son, Robbie’s parents are proud of their little law-abiding citizen.

“I am proud of him that he knew if there was an emergency you call 911, but we were kind of in shock,” said McDonald. “We explained to him when we hung up the phone that you don’t call for those things, but if there was an emergency and someone needs to get a hold of the police, then you call.”

She’s now keeping clips of Robbie’s newfound fame because you never know what the future holds.

“He could become a police officer when he’s older and this would be cute to look back on,” she said. “I think I’m going to look into getting him a little ticket book.”