Ban Teens: The Brooklyn Bridge Flag Hoax Might Have Been Done By Skateboarding Teenagers
Because the NYPD has nothing better to focus their undivided attention on, detectives have spent the last couple days focused on finding the merry pranksters who swapped the Brooklyn Bridge’s American flags with, uh, other American flags. And while there have been plenty of conspiracy theories floated about who was responsible for the great flag switch, it turns out that Jasper Johns probably had nothing to do with it. So who exactly is the prank-loving culprit? Proving once again that the most obvious answer is probably the right one (what’s up Occam), the NYPD seems to think that a bunch of skateboarding teenagers are responsible for all the commotion. So, you know, ban teens.
Via DNAinfo, NYPD detectives are “looking to talk with five young men in their late teens or early 20s whose images were captured on a grainy video around the time investigators believe the flags were swapped.” Police also are interested in questioning “city employees and pyrotechnic specialists involved in the Macy’s Fourth of July fireworks celebration,” but, let’s be honest here, it’s probably the teenagers because teenagers are the worst. And these aren’t just any kind of teenagers! These teens have special flag-raising skills, ones so special that the NYPD wouldn’t be surprised if there was also an inside job element to this whole thing and that it might even involve a union member.
So! What does all this mean? Beyond the fact that the NYPD is super embarrassed about this security breach on what is one of the most obvious potential targets for terrorism in the city? Not so much at this point. The NYPD is pretty clearly trying to make it sound like this prank was not a prank at all, but was instead the work of true, uh, criminal masterminds, because if the police make it seem like anyone could have done this—like, for example, five skateboarding slackers—then they’re admitting that they failed to protect one of our most iconic structures on a very fundamental level. Which, whoa. That would make the NYPD pretty incompetent at handling one of its most basic tasks. Shocking, right? In any case, we look forward to how this will clearly mean that the police are going to be harassing young skateboarders and union members at the same level that they do minorities in this city. We’re sure that will start happening any day now.
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