Just like any other joke, you have to know your target.
It seems like Rod was fine with this, so that's all that matters.
If one of my friends pulled something similar to me, I would not be OK with it. In fact, I'd be pretty pissed off about it not just because of the fear it would instill throughout my household, but also because of the waste of police resources. Maybe Arcadia is different, but there's plenty for our law enforcement officers to do up here without making joke calls.
I still think that everyone is fortunate that this didn't turn out badly. It certainly had the potential to turn out differently than it did.