With the upcoming presidential election, you would think my instagram and facebook feed would be full of memes mocking the two presidential nominees Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, however,with what started with just seeing a video of a “clown sighting” in Idaho on a newspaper page, has now quickly spiraled out of control. We are now living in fear of clowns sighting everywhere.

At first, I thought it was funny, hilarious even, that a newspaper page was covering a clown sighting, but as the clown epidemic grew, so did the violence. Clowns are now being seen with weapons such as knives, bats, or anything that a clown or monster would be holding in your worst nightmares. Clowns are also making their way to threaten schools on social media sites such as Twitter and facebook.

What are cops doing about this? According to KTVB.com, the Meridian police department are telling citizens to, “Ignore the clowns,” after a threat was made to Heritage Middle school.

“Don’t be an idiot.” Deputy Chief Tracy Basterrechea told KTVB in an interview to anyone who thinks it would be funny to scare people in a clown costume. “All they’re doing is creating unnecessary panic in some people and unnecessary work for other people.”

Although police departments all over the states have said they can not do anything about the clowns if there are no laws being broken, you would think if a middle school- or any school- was being threatened they would take the clown sightings a little more seriously instead of telling parents and students to turn our back to a clown holding a weapon and chasing people around.

Here in Colorado, Clown sightings and threats have been made in Weld county, Mesa County, Larimer County, Jefferson county and Adams county. On Sept. 30, Denver police responded to a call that a student had seen a clown across the street, the clown then tried to grab her and kidnap her.

Police officers and school administrators need to take these threats and sighting more seriously, especially since they are affecting schools all around our country. People who are dressing up as clowns needs to understand that threatening students and families is no longer a joke and need to find something more productive with their lives.