The Colorado Springs Police Department’s public information officer audibly sighed into the phone Monday as he told me, again, that there were still no updates on the hunt for the Mad Pooper, the feculent jogger who has been terrorizing the city.
This is somehow an improvement; last week he told me he only answered my call because he saw I was calling from a Sacramento number (he’s from Sacramento). That time, he asked me to stop calling, just like he did yesterday afternoon, when he insisted that I check the CSPD Facebook page. The page did not have any new info regarding the Mad Pooper, but it did feature a handful of inspirational quotes such as, “You are your only limit,” “Let your smile change the world, but don’t let the world change your smile,” and “At your absolute best, you still won’t be good enough for the wrong person. At your worst, you’ll still be worth it to the right person.”
The Mad Pooper, who was hopefully at her worst when she left awful craps in front of other people’s houses, could probably relate. Regardless, the CSPD had nothing fresh to drop:
No, no updates. If something comes out, we’ll put it on Twitter and Facebook. In the big scheme of things we’d like to get her identified.
One update, not from law enforcement, was a pair of very serious-seeming videos that popped up on YouTube last week, which featured a man, purporting to represent the Pooper, delivering a stern statement. He called her “Shirley” and said that she had recently suffered a traumatic brain injury as a side effect of gender reassignment surgery. Despite the extreme likelihood that this was bullshit, Fox News ran with it, as did the New York Post, the Mirror, local outlet KRDO, the Daily Caller, the Daily Mail, Thrillist, and the Kansas City Star.
When asked CSPD if they saw the videos, here’s what they said:
We did.
When asked if they believed the videos were legit:
We don’t know.
The videos are not legit. YouTube user “DISOP tv”—he of hits such as Farting Hamster, Farting Cat, and Farting Fish—admitted that he made it all up in the name of “comedy and satire”:
This dork’s misconception of comedy has constipated the investigation, but there’s still hope that some new details will dribble out. If you have any information we should know, or if you are the Mad Pooper, please contact me at patrick@deadspin.com.