YUBA CITY, Calif. — The California Highway Patrol's Yuba-Sutter Office invited themselves to a meet-up Saturday night, trolling the organizers of a possible sideshow on social media.
In a post on Facebook and Instagram, the CHP office published a screenshot of another post originally made by the Instagram account "@530takeovers."
Officers said they believed that the account had been recently created in order to organize a multi-city sideshow Saturday night in Gridley, Yuba City and Sacramento.
The operators of the Instagram page "@530takeovers" declined to provide their identity Sunday, but said in a statement that sideshows can be a form of therapy and that they don't intend to cause violence.
"Honestly we only plans stuff like this now because they don’t have any tracks open for us in the area and when there is. It’s super pricey," the statement said. "If they just gave us one spot to do our own thing and be left alone.... Can’t even host a park and chill meet without them pulling us over for something stupid when we barley pulled out."
The post, which featured an image of a sideshow, invited people to a meet spot in Yuba City at 9:30 p.m. Saturday. The meet-up was advertised as a place to "park and chill" and did not explicitly allude to a sideshow.
It teased to "after party" information to be released at 10:30 p.m.-- a tactic frequently used by sideshow organizers to give spectators and participants the location of street takeovers.
"Sweet, thanks for the invite @530takeovers! Count us in!" the CHP office said in its post. "We will be there with our cars and we even invited some friends to join us! See you all there! The vehicle code will be strictly enforced. Hope you don’t mind."
The CHP's post garnered more than 500 shares and 700 comments on Facebook. On Instagram, the post also caught the attention of hundreds of people including the account that originally posted the meet-up information.
The account's owners and the CHP office exchanged words in the comments of the post with the account owner writing, "Say park and chill to me."
The CHP responded to the comment writing, "If it stays 'chill' then we will have no problems."
The CHP says that despite the high-profile post, the group still hosted sideshow events Saturday night at different locations.
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