Improv Everywhere Participants Get Handcuffed

At a Gap store in Manhattann in the beginning of this month, Improv Everywhere organized a prank that apparently went wrong before it even began.

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Dressed up ad mannequins, the forty participants of what the collective calls the “Mannequin Mob” entered the store at Fifth Avenue in Morphsuits. The manager is no sport at all though, and he thought it was ideal to call the cops on them, and did just that.

The Prank

Wearing Gap-style clothing on top of their white suits, the pranksters zipped up and posed next to real mannequins for about ten whole minutes. Most Gap employees as well as customers seemed to be pretty amused by the whole idea, and it was all going well until the participants started to make their way out.

Handcuffed And Arrested

Before they could leave the place, the police arrived out of nowhere and started to handcuff all the participants. Charlie Todd, founder of Improv Everywhere says his team was very stressed to see innocent volunteers being handcuffed for the prank organized by him.

The Narrow Escapees

As the police was mercilessly handcuffing all the volunteers, some of them managed to exit from the store discreetly, after unzipping their suits. In totally, 20 people were arrested including founder Todd.

Why The Handcuffs?

Apparently the police assumed the prank to be an armed robbery of sorts, and drew inspiration from recent ‘flash mob robberies’ in D.C. and Chicago. But when the participants finally unzipped their suits, the police’s suspicions were rebuffed when they realized the diverse group of people joined the group, including senior citizens.

Uncuffed And Freed

Almost instantly, the officers uncuffed the participants and set them free. The best part – one of these cops had been a part of a previous Improv event called the MP3 Experiment. Even though no charges were files against the volunteers, Gap’s manager still contemplated banning them from Gap for eternity, but later gave up the idea.