Authorities in Canada are willing to do what it takes to crack down on drunken driving during the holiday season.
That includes threatening people with Nickelback.
In a Facebook post earlier this month, police in Kensington, a town in Prince Edward Island, encouraged those attending social gatherings to make sure they had a designated driver, or write down the number for a taxi company. Make arrangements to stay at the home of a friend, they suggested in the post, whatever you need to do to be safe.
Then, the agency explained what might happen if you didn’t.
“Now, with that being said, know that the Kensington Police Service will be out for the remainder of year looking for those dumb enough to feel they can drink and drive,” the post read. “And when we catch you, and we will catch you, on top of a hefty fine, a criminal charge and a years driving suspension we will also provide you with a bonus gift of playing the offices copy of Nickelback in the cruiser on the way to jail.”
The Kensington Police Service, the post stated, figured that “if you are foolish enough to get behind the wheel after drinking then a little Chad Kroeger and the boys is the perfect gift for you.”
“So please, lets not ruin a perfectly good unopened copy of Nickelback,” the Facebook post states. “You don’t drink and drive and we won’t make you listen to it.”
Nickelback, a Canadian band whose song “Rockstar,” is listed on a Wikipedia page entitled “List of music considered the worst” is … er, generally considered, well, The Worst. Sorry if you’re super into Nickelback. This cannot possibly be a surprise.
Obviously, this Facebook status from the Kensington police is a gag – Const. Robb Hartlen, the author of the post, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. that the agency doesn’t really have the Nickelback album to follow through on the threat; the picture that accompanied the post was ripped from Google, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reported.
Fair warning, though: just because Hartlen does not actually have this recording of Nickelback’s “Silver Side Up” now, that doesn’t mean he can’t track down one real fast.
“I would have no problems at all getting [a] hold of a copy of Nickelback and making that the musical play-along on the way in to chat with someone who’s been caught for drinking and driving,” Hartlen told the CBC.
Hartlen said part of the reason Nickelback was selected was because Kroeger, the band’s frontman, had previously been convicted of drunk driving. He noted that with the social media post, which has been shared more than 1,000 times, authorities were trying to “put a little humor into a very serious matter of drinking and driving.”
That’s something Hartlen echoed in an interview with Vice, saying that it’s not that law enforcement in Kensington doesn’t taken the matter seriously.
“It’s that police are viewed as this stoic, stone-faced entity,” he said. “People listen better when they can relate.”
Nickelback had not commented about this on its Facebook page by Wednesday morning, but the band shouldn’t feel too bad about the whole thing. After all, a fan is involved in it: Hartlen.
“I actually like Nickelback,” Hartlen told Vice. “Everyone says they don’t like Nickelback. It’s fashionable to do so.”
(c) 2016, The Washington Post ยท Sarah Larimer
