Baraboo PD inundated with calls from those looking for famous rapper: "This is a police department..."

BARABOO -- A social media post has callers inundating the Baraboo Police Department's non-emergency line with phone calls. The mix up has people mistakenly calling police, hoping to reach a famous rapper.

"Our communications center has been inundated with phone calls asking for a specific rapper by the name of 'Lil Uzi,'" Baraboo Police Captain Robert Sinden said.

Captain Sinden said they received between 100 and 200 non-emergency phone calls per hour for chart-topping rapper Lil Uzi Vert. He explained that the calls started on January 10th, after Snapchat and Facebook posts wrongly listed the non-emergency line as the rapper's personal telephone number.

"We made some changes to our system to allow for a recording to let people know that this was indeed not Uzi's number. This is a police department." Captain Sinden said.

As of Thursday, January 12th, the phone calls were starting to dwindle, but the calls for Uzi hadn't completely stopped.

"He's not a representative of the Baraboo Police Department, but he appears to have a lot of talent," said Captain Sinden.

So while it was briefly cause for a good laugh, phone calls to police are not to be taken lightly and have real consequences

"There's very few people in the dispatch center, so if they're all busy taking calls for Lil Uzi, they can't help the true emergencies that happen out there," said Captain Sinden.

The phone number mistakenly listed was the Baraboo non-emergency line.

If you have an emergency, you should always call 911.