A Denton police officer urged vigilantes to make a bloody example of the next creepy clown, as hysteria over the national phenomenon spreads to the Dallas suburbs.
"This clown crap is really getting on my nerves," Officer Latrice Pettaway wrote on Facebook Monday night, according to screen shots sent to The Dallas Morning News.
"Please handle it," Pettaway continued. "Pop a cap in the first clown you see. Someone needs to just hit one and the rest of these fools will learn."
Denton police said Pettaway, a sworn officer since 2014, could face an investigation if she broke the department's social media rules, though they were still looking into the post after learning of it late Tuesday morning.
"We frown upon posts like that," police spokesman Shane Kizer said. He said shooting people dressed like clowns is "absolutely not" how the department wants the public to respond to viral reports of clowns luring children in the woods, prowling backyards or standing menacingly on darkened streets.
Many of those reports turn out to be hoaxes, false rumors or misunderstandings--like the creepy clown in Virginia that turned out to be an autistic boy showing off his Halloween mask.
But some police departments around Dallas issued alerts about "clown threats" this week. Kizer said Denton schools were threatened in an Instagram post by "killerclown_jonny," which promised to "kill the teachers ... and kidnap all the kids." Killerclown_jonny later deleted the picture and said it was a hoax.
#DallasISD Police and Dallas Police are investigating all leads relating to clown threats. We will continue to monitor & share information.
— Dallas ISD (@dallasschools) October 3, 2016
Whether or not the clown menace is real, some civilians have threatened to take measures into their own hands.
But Pettaway, who could not be reached for comment, appears to be the first police officer to urge vigilante justice.
After she asked her friends to shoot a clown on sight, another Facebooker wrote to Pettaway: "I think I heard that one was already hit in the head somewhere up north today."
That referred to another hoax—a fabricated news report that a creepy clown had been shot in Indiana. But Pettaway, apparently credulous, replied: "Great!"
