More People On High Alert During Halloween
SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — The festive nature of Halloween is mixing with fear and more people going on "high alert."
Call it a more vigilant reaction to the changing face of Halloween.
"Especially if you're inviting people over to your house, sometimes strangers can come over, I mean, you don't know so you just have to take precautions," parent Chris Adamiak said.
"It changes Halloween, it changes the fun, it changes the safety," Parent Lili Lopez said.
Dress-up in some cases has lead to danger.
In Long Beach, a Halloween costume party turned deadly when a man with his face concealed began shooting into the crowd.
In Stockton last year, a suspect in a clown mask attacked a crowd of trick-or-treaters, stabbing a man trying to protect a child.
"It's scary," Lopez said.
A caller into the Elk Grove police dispatch center saw something she thought was strange on Thursday. A dispatch recording described her concern:
Caller: "I just drove past "Horseshoe Park, and there is an adult, walking around the park, in a Michael Myers costume carrying what I'm hoping is a rubber weapon."
A dispatcher responds: "I have a call in, I'm gonna have someone check it out...just to make sure..."
Jamie Hudson has been a police dispatcher for thirty years and says Halloween mostly brings calls for traffic problems. He is always ready for anything.
"We want people to call us if they believe that there is something strange happening," Hudson said. "We would rather us go out and make sure it's legitimate."
For the Elk Grove caller who identified something strange on this Halloween, an officer did find the person in the creepy costume.
"They were able to confirm that indeed it was a costume and asked him, out of consideration, to maybe put that plastic knife away just to kind of put everybody else at ease," Elk Grove police officer Jason Jimenez said.