Police records reveal that threats from social media users led to intensive surveillance of those participating in the clown craze
Vague threats from social media users dressed as menacing clowns in 2016 led to intense police monitoring of their accounts and an effort to “identify those who may be responsible”, according to records from Washington DC’s Metropolitan police department (MPD).
The threats, which came in the lead-up to Halloween from accounts billing themselves as “killer clowns” under user names like “snappytheclown_” and “dmvclownns”, led to intensive surveillance of those participating in the clown craze which triggered a wave of clown-themed media coverage.
Clown sightings were eventually recorded all over the US in 2016, having apparently begun in Greenville, South Carolina, before spreading across the south and then the rest of the nation. They also came to the attention of the police.
An 3 October 2016 document, entitled Social Media Clown Threats, laid out measures taken over the previous four days in relation to “threats coming from accounts created by unknown persons with profile pictures of clowns” on “the popular Social Media sites today like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc”.
from The Guardian https://ift.tt/3fkzS0S
