Improv Everywhere - Police Intervention

Police Intervention

Some IE events have attracted police attention. The annual "No Pants" event involves a large number of people riding the subway, all claiming to have forgotten their pants by accident. During a No Pants mission on 22 January 2006, the New York City Police Department handcuffed eight members of the group while on the subway (according to the group, over 160 people had participated in the city-wide event). The eight handcuffed participants had been riding the 6 train and were taken into custody and issued summonses for disorderly conduct. After appearing in court, the charges were dismissed. Despite the setback, IE continues the tradition each January, and in more recent years, the police have arrived at the event's meeting point not to make arrests, but to serve as friendly escorts. On January 9, 2011, over 3,500 people participated in the No Pants ride in New York, and thousands more participated in 48 additional cities around the world. Todd has stated that No Pants has evolved from a small prank in 2002 into an "international celebration of silliness".

On 21 May 2005 IE staged a fake U2 street concert on a rooftop in New York hours before the real U2 were scheduled to perform at Madison Square Garden. A crowd formed, most of which thought that the people on the rooftop were actually U2. However, just like at the filming of the band's Where the Streets Have No Name video in 1987, the police eventually shut the performance down, but not before IE was able to exhaust their four-song repertoire and get most of the way through an encore repeat of "Vertigo". The crowd, even those who had realized that this was a prank, shouted "one more song!," and then "let them play!" when the police officers arrived. This mission was number 23 on the VH1 countdown of the "40 Greatest Pranks."

During the Best Buy Invasion mission, an 80-person IE team entered a Best Buy store dressed in blue shirts and khaki pants—the uniform colors of Best Buy employees—and answered questions for customers (though denying being an employee of Best Buy if asked). While many of the store's actual employees laughed and took photos of the pranksters, the store's management called the police. After assessing the situation the police informed the Best Buy staff that they could not do anything except ask the IE agents to leave the store as there was nothing illegal about wearing a blue polo shirt with khaki pants.