Elf causes trouble for Cleveland Police Department

CLEVELAND, Tenn. (WDEF) — The Cleveland Police Department found a creative way to engage with community members on social media.

“911, what location is your emergency? We know this is you. You’ve got to stop calling 911. Unless you have an emergency, stop calling,” a dispatch worker said.

Someone who was in jail is now accused of prank calling dispatch and giving Cleveland Police a hard time.

“He is gone. I don’t know where he is at. We have looked everywhere and we can’t find him,” Sergeant Evie West said.

The suspect, an elf on the shelf, was found on security cameras.

“I posted a picture of our elf that was incarcerated and so at the time we didn’t know who he was. Everyone has their own names for their elves, so we posted a picture and said, ‘Hey, if anyone knows any information,’ and it was suppose to be a little funny, where we were going to hashtag parents night off,” Sergeant West said.

The Facebook post took off.

“So all of these people started messaging the police department and saying we need to get the elf out. ‘How can we do this? How much is the bail? What are his charges?’ All this stuff. And so I guess we decided hey we need to come up with something,” Sergeant West said.

They created a story. The elf was taken out of jail and transported to the police department for questioning. The elf stayed the night at the police station and the next morning was gone.

“The more we went on with it, the more the community began to engage. And so we were very conscientious of making sure that we responded to each comment and to each picture that people sent in,” she said.

Thousands of people have seen the posts.

“Social media is a great tool for us to be able to communicate with our community. And so we use it when we have cases, when we have suspects that we are trying to find information about or victims or whatever. In this case, when it is kind of slow, we want to still engage with our community by doing fun things and spotlighting things officers are doing,” Sergeant West said.

There is no telling what will happen next with the elf, but people are responding.

Police say they’ve only receive one negative comment about this. It isn’t the first time the Cleveland Police Department has gained attention on social media. Last year, video of an officer dancing for Salvation Army donations, went viral.