As Halloween nears, clown craze likely to grow and police don’t necessarily need to know

Unless the clown is breaking the law, don’t call police

The clown phenomenon sweeping the country has a lot of people freaked out.

And famous clown writers annoyed.

People are calling police about clowns staring at them in public. But they’re not doing that yet in La Crosse, said police captain Jason Melby.

“We do not have a strategy, specicially, for clowns,” Melby said with a straight face. “Obviously, it is not what someone is wearing or what they have on that is a concern to us.”

There has been the one picture floating around social media of a clown on the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse campus, but nothing more, yet.  

La Crosse’s clown has, so far, been good. As Halloween approaches and social media hype gains steam, however, the clown craze will likely grow and creepy clowns staring at people might go too far. That’s when Melby cares.

“If there’s somebody who is intentionally causing a disturbance – prowling around a house or in parks after hours, trespassing – those are the type of behaviors that would be a concern to the La Crosse Police Dept.,” Melby said.

Across the river in La Crescent, Minn., there have been no clown sightings and the police are trying to get ahead of the expectation someone will jump on the bandwagon.

The La Crescent police put this out on their Facebook page Thursday: “Any social media clown threats/hoaxes may qualify as threats of violence, and will be taken seriously by this department and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. This is not the time for people to be walking around in a clown costume attempting to scare others because we will be introducing ourselves to these people.”