When Pokemon adopted “gotta catch ’em all” as its theme song, it’s unlikely the creators had the apprehension of criminals in mind. Yet police in Smithfield, Va., tried to use the newfound popularity of Pokemon Go to do just that.
Local PD put out a Facebook post last week advertising the fact that a purple blob named Ditto, “The rarest Pokemon of all has been spotted in the Smithfield Police Department processing room.”
The post went on to say that since Ditto is “so rare we can only allow a limited number of people in the building to capture it.”
Smithfield PD said its computer had generated a “list of random citizens eligible for the rare opportunity” and enthused, “If your name is on the list below, you are one of the lucky folks invited to come to the Police Department for the capture!”
The list, however, was not so random. The eight names invited in for the “rare opportunity” all had felony warrants out for their arrests.
“What can I do to get on this list?” posted one non-felonious Pokemon enthusiast who clearly wasn’t in on the joke.
Sgt. Bryan Miller, who administers the department’s Facebook page, explained to the Virginian-Pilot newspaper that he didn’t do it just to be amusing.
Miller thought that by piggybacking on this fad, the department might draw attention to folks who ought to be captured, though not in a Poke Ball. Someone could read it and tip them off.
As for criminal Pokemon players wandering into the police department, Miller wrote in a follow-up that “In just 9 days the original post has reached over 52,000 people, been shared over 450 times, and received numerous comments. Unfortunately none of the randomly chosen folks on the list came to the PD for this rare capture opportunity.”
However, he promised that “If someone does come in for the capture we will be sure and post it!”
