A British UFO expert has waded into a conspiracy theory that says dozens of Miami police cars were called out to handle a fight in a shopping mall involving a 10-foot silver alien.
Nick Pope, who was once responsible for investigating reported UFO sightings for the Ministry of Defence, described the spread of the story as ‘truly bizarre’.
Clips from the scene were shared widely on social media after they were filmed on the evening of January 1 by someone with a bird’s-eye view on the Florida city’s Biscayne Boulevard.
The sight was already extraordinary enough, with more and more units continuously arriving to join a huge number of police cars already blaring their sirens and flashing their lights near Bayside Marketplace mall.
Multiple people had reported gunshots in the building – but they turned out to be fireworks being thrown by a group of teenagers.
Four of them who were ‘causing a riot inside the mall’ and ‘causing panic’ were taken into custody, according their arrest reports obtained by WPLG.
But it wasn’t the detail of the incident that whipped the internet into a frenzy. It was a moment in the footage that appeared to show an odd-shaped figure walking beside the road.
While some pointed out that it looked like three people simply walking beside each other, others believed they were seeing proof of extraterrestrial life.
’10ft Aliens/Creatures (caught on camera?) What?’ wrote actor Antonio Sabato Jr, who shared the clip from GoodLionTV on X (formerly Twitter).
It’s fair to say Nick Pope is far from convinced by the footage.
He said: ‘This story – and the reaction to it – is truly bizarre. There’s no credible evidence that anything UFO or alien-related happened, or that this was anything other than the police responding to reports of youths fighting.
‘But on social media in particular, this story has exploded, probably because it’s captured the zeitgeist of America’s current obsession with UFOs.’
He compared the story to other viral alien-based stories from the US, including the campaign to ‘storm Area 51’ in 2019 and the video of Tiffany Gomas who said another passenger on her flight was ‘not real’ last year.
Nick continued: ‘The timing is interesting, as all this comes just days before the Intelligence Community Inspector General is due to give a classified, members-only briefing on UAP to the House Oversight Committee.
‘This is part of wider US Congress engagement on this subject. Some conspiracy theorists have speculated the Miami aliens story was concocted by elements in the US intelligence community as a distraction from this week’s briefing, scheduled for 12 January.
‘I’m sceptical of this, and suspect this is a straightforward hoax, which has gone viral because of the fact that UFOs have gone from fringe to mainstream in the US.’
He added: ‘Much as I’d love all this to be true – aliens in a shopping mall would be fascinating and fun – I’m sure it’s just a case of people using their computer skills to create or doctor images.
‘Rumour and the will to believe then elevated all this to the point where it’s become an international news story.’
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