On X (formerly Twitter), the Deer Park Police Department boasts a significant social media presence, with nearly 15,000 people following “@deerparkpd.” They regularly tweet information about road closures, firework safety and ask citizens of Deer Park for help in locating missing persons.
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However, one little detail makes the account’s presence particularly bizarre: The City of Deer Park Police Department doesn’t have an account on X.
While the police department does maintain an active Facebook presence, they’re represented on X by the City of Deer Park account: “@DEERPARKTXGOV.”
So, if there isn’t an official Deer Park Police Department account on X, who runs the account and why? More importantly, how was the account able to get verified by X and receive a grey checkmark, which is normally reserved for official government agencies?
As it turns out, the answer is even more bizarre than it seems on the surface. For the past several weeks, the “official” Deer Park Police Department account on X has actually been run by two teenagers.
While it might sound unbelievable, the whole situation largely stemmed from teenage boredom. Too much time on their hands and too little to do led to one simple idea:
“Let’s see how hard it is to impersonate a police department.”
Part one: The Idea
Fourteen-year-old DFW resident Wyatt (who chose to have his last name redacted for privacy reasons) doesn’t normally spend his free time impersonating government agencies.
Instead, he spends most his time playing videogames or learning as much as he can about the weather, since he plans to be a meteorologist one day.
But one late June afternoon, Wyatt turned his attention elsewhere. Originally, his idea was to start an account dedicated to the fictional “Village of Deer Park.” Bizarrely, Wyatt had no idea that Deer Park was a real place in Texas; the village’s name was something he picked randomly.
“Originally, I just wanted to parody a police department,” Wyatt said. “I didn’t mean to impersonate the real Deer Park, I had no idea there was a place called that.”
Wyatt pulled out all the stops when it came to making the account look legitimate: He created a fake website for the “Village of Deer Park,” drafted a variety of official-looking tweets, and even created accounts for other municipal services within the fictional city.
On June 26th, 2024, Wyatt put his plan into action and made the account’s first tweet. From that point on, all he needed to do was wait for X’s verification team to get back to him.
Part Two: The Payoff
As it turns out, Wyatt didn’t have to wait long. X officially awarded the account a gray checkmark, marking it as an official government agency, just a few days after he submitted his application.
While one might like to believe that the process of verifying government accounts is robust and secure, Wyatt said the application was remarkably simple to fake.
“They only ask for your name, what you do, and your agency’s website,” Wyatt said. “They don’t ask for anything else to verify that you are who you say you are.”
At this point, Wyatt realized that he couldn’t run the account by himself, so he brought a partner on board: A 16-year-old from San Diego who goes by the nickname “Gogi.”
While Gogi didn’t have any experience impersonating government accounts, he had what he describes as a “good head for marketing.” More importantly, he thought it was hilarious that the account had been verified, and he was committed to keeping the joke going for as long as possible.
With their skillsets combined, the two set to work, copying tweets from other “official” government agencies and modifying them so that the account looked legitimate. They recalled feeling “on top of the world.”
Part Three: Things Get Silly
While most of the account’s tweets were fairly typical for a police department, Gogi and Wyatt couldn’t help but have a little bit of fun. They are teenagers, after all.
As the account continued tweeting, more of its posts started to take on a somewhat comedic tone. At one point, they tweeted a poll asking if they should “Give the K9 unit a donut.”
On July 2nd, they put out a tweet that simply said “grilled cheese” with no apparent context.
Though tweets of this nature might seem odd for a police department, their playful banter attracted quite a large following. Eventually, they accumulated over 10,000 followers, outpacing the actual City of Deer Park’s follower count on X.
But while this newfound audience brought a lot of positive attention to the account, it brought questions from across the internet. People were starting to ask if the account was legitimate, and the two teenagers started realizing just how much trouble they could be in.
Part Three: Things Get Serious
As the account got bigger, the two started being overwhelmed by the attention, especially the large number of anti-police comments they received.
“We got a lot of people making anti-cop comments to us, which we thought was really funny,” said Gogi. “Like, we’re both teenagers, not real police officers.”
While some people caught onto the joke fairly quickly, Wyatt and Gogi said that they got more than a few comments thinking that they were a real police department. At one point, someone even messaged them trying to report a crime.
As the pressure of running the account grew, the situation took a sudden turn for the worse: While watching news coverage of Hurricane Beryl, Wyatt saw the name “Deer Park” mentioned.
Suddenly, he realized that the two of them had been impersonating a real police department, and all the fun of running the account was replaced by fear of potential consequences.
On July 3rd, the account issued a statement clarifying that they were not affiliated with the real-life city of Deer Park.
“I was trying to dissociate myself from the real Deer Park,” Wyatt said. “I didn’t want to ruin their reputation or go to prison or anything like that.”
Just to be safe, the two decided to briefly deactivate the account, which resulted in them losing their gray checkmark. Wyatt also emailed the real life Deer Park Police Department, apologizing for any confusion they might have caused. The two waited with bated breath for the response.
Part Four: The Aftermath
Luckily for the two of them, Deer Park PD was a good sport about the whole situation. Though they didn’t respond to Wyatt directly, they told KPRC 2 that they didn’t feel like the account qualified as impersonation.
“When we looked into the account, we saw that they were claiming to represent the fictional area of ‘Deer Park Villages,’ not the city of Deer Park,” said Deer Park Police Department Lieutenant Chris Brown.
Brown also noted that the account didn’t use the Deer Park Police Department’s logo or branding, so they didn’t consider it worthwhile to pursue further action.
Wyatt and Gogi were off the hook, much to the relief of Wyatt’s parents.
“When I first told them what I did, they were shocked,” Wyatt said. “Once I explained everything, they didn’t care that much, though. They just told me not to get arrested.”
The two of them formally apologized to the City of Deer Park and changed their account to include “Parody” in their bio, so there was no chance of future confusion. However, the question remained: What were they supposed to do with the account now?
Part Five: The Future
Even though their grey checkmark was gone, the account’s thousands of followers hadn’t gone anywhere. In fact, the reveal that they were not a real police department seemed to amuse them more than anything.
By this point, they had gained a reputation for their “quirky” tweets, and the two had developed something of a small fanbase.
Even before the account was revealed to be fake, multiple people had been making fan art of the police department. These drawings included a “fursona,” or mascot, of the Police Department: A deer in a police uniform that solves supernatural crimes.
Multiple fans of the account had even created other parody accounts, including the Deer Park Village Fire Department. Many of these accounts veered into a kind of fictional worldbuilding, depicting the “Village of Deer Park” as a town plagued by supernatural horrors.
Gogi and Wyatt didn’t want to just abandon these followers, so they chose to take the account in a different direction. They created a groupchat on the messaging platform Discord, where they invited followers to join them and keep the joke going.
As of the writing of this article, the chat has over 200 people in it, and it’s become something of a community. Fans of “Deer Park PD” spend their time developing content surrounding the fictional village, including early plans for a horror game and an entire animated series.
Many members of the chat said that it’s become a home for them in a way.
“It’s amazing that we’ve been able to form such a large group of people interested in the same thing,” said discord user “Exite,” who runs the Deer Park Libertarian Party. “I’ve made so many friends here.”
As for Wyatt and Gogi, the two have been blown away by the positive response to something that started as a simple joke.
“I think it’s pretty cool that we’ve built this entire community off one dumb idea I had,” Wyatt said. “It’s wild how big it’s gotten.”
In the future, they plan to keep running the account with the aim of keeping the community alive as long as possible. Wyatt hopes to go to Texas A&M for either journalism or meteorology, and Gogi wants to attend a school with a good business program so he can be a CEO one day.
Whatever the future holds in store, one thing is for sure: They’re not planning on impersonating any more government accounts any time soon.
“I’m never doing this again,” Wyatt said with a laugh. “I’m not trying to go to jail for a dumb joke.”