The Candler County Sheriff’s Office did not buy a plane. Nobody there is licensed to fly one. And Sheriff Miles is almost certainly not skydiving into a flower festival this weekend.
The agency posted an elaborate April Fools’ Day joke to its official Facebook page, announcing the acquisition of a surplus single-engine fixed-wing aircraft for aerial speed enforcement along the I-16 corridor.
The post, written in the voice of a straight-faced press release, described deputies completing an online pilot course, the aircraft being equipped with “advanced optics and communications equipment,” and ongoing logistics work around hangar space, fuel costs, and — the post noted — “that landing part, which is pretty important.”
For anyone who made it to the end, the agency came clean.
“No, we did not get a plane,” the post read. “And nobody here is licensed to fly anything bigger than a drone. Yet! April Fools.”
The post also included a secondary gag: if the post reached 500 likes, Sheriff Miles would parachute into the Another Bloomin’ Festival in Metter on Saturday. The agency acknowledged it was still working through “whether or not he actually agreed to it and who’s packing the parachute.”
What’s real: The Candler County Sheriff’s Office does operate drones, which have been used for search and rescue operations, crash scenes, and area surveillance. That part was not a joke.
The agency closed with a note that doubles as a public service announcement: “Don’t believe everything you read on social media.”
B.T. Clark
B.T. Clark is an award-winning journalist and the Publisher of The Georgia Sun. He has 25 years of experience in journalism and served as Managing Editor of Neighbor Newspapers in metro Atlanta for 15 years and Digital Director at Times-Journal Inc. for 8 years. His work has appeared in several newspapers throughout the state including Neighbor Newspapers, The Cherokee Tribune and The Marietta Daily Journal. He is a Georgia native and a fifth-generation Georgian.
