Peruvian police in Lima used World Cup mascot costumes to help arrest a suspect in a drugs raid earlier this week, turning a routine anti-drug operation into a scene that looked more like a match-day stunt than a police action. Officers broke through a gate before taking the suspect into custody.

The timing matters because the disguise involved Clutch the Bald Eagle and Maple the Moose, the mascots for the 2026 World Cup in the United States and Canada. Carlos Fredy Alcántara Obregón said the suspect was a die-hard football fan, and that detail shaped the way his Green Squad moved in.

“Thanks to the intelligence work carried out by the team, we were able to establish that the person we were about to arrest was a die-hard football fan, living and breathing the World Cup fever,” Alcántara Obregón said. He added that his Green Squad personnel dressed up as the mascots “in order to approach him without arousing suspicion and make the arrest.”

The tactic worked because the costumes gave officers a way to get close before the suspect understood what was happening. That made the arrest unusual, but it also fit the setting: a city where police were trying to turn a football-themed disguise into an advantage in a drugs raid.

There was one problem with the performance. Clutch and Maple are fictional characters, and the story notes that they do not have visas to work in Peru. Zayu the Jaguar was unavailable for the raid, leaving the two mascots to handle the role of surprise entry. In practical terms, the operation depended on deception, not pageantry.

What remains unanswered is the case itself. The arrest was made earlier this week in Lima, but the public explanation stopped at the disguise and did not say what drugs were involved or what charges the suspect will face next. For now, the most striking image is still the one that opened the raid: two World Cup mascots at the gate, and a football fan who did not realize the game was over.