After someone smashed the glass door of a Santa Fe UPS office last week and took money, a security guard said a thin, blond man he described as a “juggalo” had been hanging out around the store in clown make-up.

Officers couldn’t find the alleged juggalo after a break-in that set off an alarm at the UPS office at 223 N. Guadalupe St. about 2 a.m. Aug. 13. Someone had used a rock to break the front door before taking money from the cash registers as well as a money bag. There were no cameras in the store.

But a security guard told police that the “juggalo” in clown make-up had been in the area. One of two police reports says the clown man had been watching officers process the scene, but when officers looked for him he couldn’t be found.

The juggalo was described as a thin, Anglo man, about 5 feet, 8 inches tall with shoulder-length blond hair and face paint  –  specifically “eyes like a clown with red flames or crowns (where) his eyebrows were.” He was wearing a black shirt, tan pants and an orange bandana. The guard said the juggalo left when the guard stopped to talk with him.

The question of whether juggalos are just fans of Insane Clown Posse’s often-controversial “horrorcore” music or something more sinister has been a topic of some dispute.

In 2011, the FBI classified them as a gang threat. The band filed a lawsuit seeking FBI records on why the juggalos were included in the gang report, saying that a majority of juggalos are law-abiding folks who are simply misunderstood.

“Calling them a gang is people who fear what they don’t understand,” Joseph Bruce, who as part of Insane Clown Posse goes by Violent J, told The Associated Press this week.

Joseph Utsler, Shaggy 2 Dope in the band, added: “It’s a huge body of people. In any group that large you’re going to have people that aren’t the most fantastic people in the world. You’re going to have awesome people. So how can you say just because, like, there is a group of kids that happen to be Juggalos that are in a gang that you can say like, little Jimmy Beaver from Iowa in the cornfields is a gang member because he’s a Juggalo? That’s ridiculous. It’s stupid.”

SFPD spokeswoman Celina Westerfelt said the UPS break-in is the first time anyone has suggested that a juggalo was a suspect in a criminal case in Santa Fe.

She said the police department’s own gang unit considers some juggalos just fans but believes like other law enforcement agencies that some of the fan base does engage in criminal activity  –  although there is no evidence of any organized juggalo “gang” in Santa Fe.

Last year, the U.S. Marshals Office in Albuquerque identified a robbery suspect on its most-wanted list as “a known gang member of the Insane Clown Posse ‘Juggalo.’ ”

Source- http://www.abqjournal.com/2509.....-shop.html