As law enforcement agencies across the country continued to post “hot cop” photos this week in attempts to best one another, one California police department upped its game to a spooky level.
The Lincoln Police Department on Friday posted a photo to Facebook that meshed the "hot cop" challenge started by Gainesville, Florida, officers during Hurricane Irma and the wildly successful big screen version of novelist Stephen King's "It."
The photo shows four of its officers standing on a street, one of the officers is reaching down to the pavement. On the asphalt is a line of tasty-looking doughnuts leading to a nearby drainage culvert.
In the culvert is someone dressed as the villain in “It,” Pennywise the Clown. Nearby floats one of Pennywise’s trademark red balloons.
The photo caption reads, "Ok, Gainesville had the 'hot cops' and Loudon had the 'cop on a bucket,' so the Lincoln (CA) Police Department decided to join the fun."
“Clown: ‘Hey guys, I have donuts down here!’”
As the officer reaches for the first in the line of doughnuts, a colleague tries to pull him to clown-free safety.
As of Wednesday, the photo had been shared nearly 200,000 times and garnered about 171,000 reactions, all positive. The image also earned some jokes from commenters.
“But, like, is the clown hot?” one woman asked.
“Looks like a trap,” another commenter said.
“With sprinkles!” one man added.
“But why did they put perfectly good donuts on the ground?” another woman asked.
“Donut go down there!” one commenter warned.
The photo from the Lincoln police officers is the latest in a string of pictures challenging a selfie posted by Gainesville officers earlier this month as they prepared for a 12-hour shift at the height of Hurricane Irma. The photo, posted on Facebook, had commenters praising the officers' looks and offering to be arrested to get closer to the men.
The Gainesville photo was removed from Facebook after one of the officers, Officer Michael Hamill, came under fire for alleged anti-Semitic posts on his personal Facebook page. He has been suspended while the department investigates the claims.
In the days since the Gainesville photo went viral, however, departments across the country have offered their own photos of their finest. On Tuesday, the Lafourche Parish Sheriff's Office in southeast Louisiana posted a photo of their finest looking K-9 officers.
“K-9s Hoss, Baretta and Mako wanted in on the #HotCop competition, but they hope to start a new hashtag: #HotDogs!” the caption read.
In another post, Loudon, Tennessee, police officers pose for the camera. One particularly short officer stands on a bucket.
"Loudon Police Department Adam Squad. We ain't pretty, but we get the job done," the post reads.
The challenge has become so popular since the post by the Gainesville officers that it has spawned a Facebook page of its own, Hot Cop Challenge. The page had just over 1,000 followers as of Wednesday.
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