Vermont State Police learned a very important lesson recently: don’t let inmates paint official cruiser decals.

Vermont State officials learned on Feb. 2that they were the victims of an inmate prank. When one worker noticed a pig carefully tucked into a scene on one of the decals of a Vermont State Police cruiser, an investigation began.

The Burlington Free Press first reported that officials called it a failure in quality assurance within the office of the Vermont Correctional Industries Print Shop in St. Albans.

Inmates in the correctional facility are used as workers and one of their jobs is to create decals for cruisers that are sent throughout the state. The Rutland Herald reported that only one batch of 60 decals was tampered with, 30 of which made their way onto different cruisers.

Reactions to the scandal have gone nation wide, making top news as far away as Denver, Col.Castleton State College students immediately reacted on their Facebook walls, liking the links and sharing among friends.

 Stephanie Perkins, a junior, lookedat the image and, after a moment of studying it, broke out laughing.

“That is so funny! You don’t even catch it at first, but then you look at it for a bit and there it is,” she said.

Students, who occasionally deal with police themselves, universally found the prank humorous.

“Whatever inmate did this is actually very smart. I don’t know what he is in there for, but he is kind of genius,” said Perkins.

“I think the Vermont Police are so caught up in the fact that they have authority that they needed this to bring them back down to a more human level,” said senior Gabrielle Tamasi.  

The cost to fix the prank is making taxpayers find it not so humorous though. It is going to cost $780 to fix the 30 cars affected and if any more are found could cost more, according to a press release from the correctional facility.

“I would just pay the $780 out of pocket for this, it’s priceless. I bet the force is finding this far from humourous, but when they are looked at in such a bad way, they have to expect that they are going to be picked on,” sophomore Tegan Donnelly said.