It's a rough way to start Thanksgiving Monday.

A Saskatoon resident living in the city's Willowgrove neighbourhood found his street swarming with at least 12 police cars and cruisers Monday morning.

"The people who reside there had no idea why the police had surrounded their home," said Staff Sgt. Grant Obst.

It turns out the police had received a call before 9 a.m. CST from a man claiming to have two people hostage in the home on Lucyk Crescent.

The man told people he'd shot one of his two hostages inside a Lucyk Crescent home. (Guy Quenneville/CBC)

The man said he had two people under his armed sway, wanted money and that he had shot someone in the house, hence why two paramedics vehicles had also joined the cadre of police vehicles, said Obst.

Once police officers, including a member of the tactical unit and a member of the K9 unit, arrived at the sleepy neighbourhood, the call turned out to be "a 100 per cent hoax."

"Of course we apologized and backed off and at this point we're just trying to figure out who called and what it was about," said Obst.

Treat it for real

Police had to respond the way they did in case the threat turned out to be real, said Obst, echoing statements previously made by authorities in the wake of the significant police responses to the infamous white powder scares perpetrated by Alexa Emerson.

"There was nothing to it at all other than somebody wasting a lot of time and resources," said Obst, adding that such responses come with a cost.

"If you've got 10 or 12 police officers, a canine unit, an ambulance unit deployed to one certain part of the city, obviously there are other parts of the city that are being left alone or neglected," said Obst.

"Our resources were tied out for at least an hour there."

Police began leaving the crescent at around 9:30 a.m. as a jogger moved along with his morning run.