Police in Crowley, La., had to apologize after using the siren from the horror franchise “The Purge” to signal a curfew during the city’s quarantine.
In order to stop the spread of coronavirus, the city has implemented a 9 p.m. curfew for residents, but many found the noise chosen for the siren eerily familiar.
Louisiana news station KATC uploaded a video of the siren to YouTube.
Crowley police drove around the city’s Acadia Parish playing the noise to alert people to the nightly curfew, which lasts until 6 a.m.
Jimmy Broussard, the city’s police chief, told KATC that he didn’t know the noise was from “The Purge” movies, and doesn’t plan to use any other type of siren in the future.
“Last night a ‘Purge Siren’ was utilized by the Crowley Police Department as part of their starting curfew. We have received numerous complaints with the belief that our agency was involved in this process. We were not involved in the use of the ‘Purge Siren’ and will not utilize any type of siren for this purpose,” Acadia Parish sheriff K.P. Gibson said in a statement to the news station.
All “The Purge” horror movies feature a 12-hour window of time where all crime, no matter how violent, is made legal in the U.S. The siren is used to signal the beginning of the Purge. It can be heard in most of the franchise’s trailers, including the most recent movie, “The First Purge.”