Philadelphia police abandon Crisco for 'other things' to keep fans off light poles

Philadelphia police famously used Crisco as a deterrent to keep rowdy Eagles fans from climbing light poles in the aftermath of their NFC championship win over the Minnesota Vikings.

It didn’t work.

With the stakes even higher for Sunday’s Super Bowl against the New England Patriots, Philly’s finest have to come up with a better plan. Win or lose, the city will surely have some prospective pole climbers on Sunday.

Police commissioner Richard Ross addressed his department’s plans on Tuesday with the media, answering the hard questions about vegetable shortening.

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Is Crisco still in the plans?

“I don’t think we’ll use that this time,” Ross said. “I can’t tell you there won’t still be attempts. But I just would suspect that some of them would be far more difficult than they were with the Crisco attempt. As I’m told maybe after a while, with weather, it can have an adverse effect on the Crisco. I’m not an expert on that.”

Not a Crisco expert, huh? Far more difficult, you say? Interesting.

“We will be doing some other things relative to trying to keep people off of certain objects. … there will be some small variations to what we did last week.”

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So he’s playing it coy. Probably a good call. After all, you can’t let the opposition know your game plan ahead of time and expect to win.

Whatever Ross has up his sleeve, he sounds confident in its execution and its safety.

“We’ve got some brilliant people working for us. Rest assured that whatever we do, it will be safe to anybody, any animal, any child, anything. It will be effective.”

Good luck on Sunday, Philadelphia. Win or lose.