And The Joke(r)s Won’t Stop After Patrol Sends Gotham City Alert

SPRINGFIELD, MO — The alerts that police agencies send out about missing and endangered people aren’t funny — but one sent Tuesday by the Missouri State Highway Patrol has the internet falling all over itself LOL-ing.

State police mistakenly sent out an Amber Alert about the driver of a purple and green 1978 Dodge Charger who was wanted out of Gotham City. The alert didn’t specifically say The Joker was the driver, but that’s the drift the story took once the internet got wind of it.

Oof, or words to that effect, the patrol said later.

“This was meant to be a test message,” the agency tweeted, adding in capital letters, “THERE WAS NO ALERT.”

There’s also no such place as Gotham City in Missouri. There is a Metropolis in downstate Illinois that claims to be the birthplace of Superman, another popular DC Comics superhero, but that’s another story.

Still, Twitter users riffed off the mistake.

“I hundred percent googled Gotham City Missouri, so they got me,” someone tweeted.

“It's obviously a cover-up,” another person wrote on the platform. “The Joker is at large.”

That set off a whole big thing.

To internet-prove it, which isn’t always proof at all, people posted GIFs showing the (hideously colored) green and purple Joker Car, or Jokermobile, as the vehicle driven by Batman’s nemesis was called.

Someone tweeting under the supervillain’s name acted very Joker-like: “Please stop sharing this image. I expect a full delete of this tweet.”

While some people had sport with the alert test gone wrong, others labeled that behavior untoward or said it damages the patrol’s credibility.

A reporter from news station KMBC called the mistake a “major error, especially at a time of heightened alert,” and wanted to know who would be held accountable.

To that, one person tweeted, “did someone actually think this was real? did you think this was real? because that says more about you than the mistake.”

“Nobody thought it was real and that’s the point,” another person responded. “What is real is the reduced trust people have in these types of public alerts. How many people will simply just turn off the amber alert notifications on their phones?”