Who do the police call when monsters attack?

Ok here's a fun question to ponder:

What exactly would the procedure be if some small town cops found their town under attack by monsters? Not Godzilla-sized creatures mind you, just some nice, blood thirsty dog or bear-sized things that of course are never actually seen by law enforcement until much later, but who's malicious intents are all too apparent.

In the world of the B-movie no doubt the local Barney Fife would just call the nearest National Guard base from a pay phone and have an air strike in 15 minutes, but I'm looking for what would happen in the REAL world if something that strange actually happened? Who would they try to call first?

I've got a couple of story ideas simmering in small sauce pans at the back of the stove which may someday need me to answer that question, but I'm basically asking because years of contaminating my brain with cheap B-movies has made me curious.

Jersey Chick said:

What about state police? (My first thought was National Guard - I'm not very original, eh? Of course, we don't have all that many monsters here, either. )

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That's my first thought, but I guess then the question becomes who do they bring in?

Ok, my story (what there is of it) has about a dozen people from multiple houses going missing in a single night, with nothing left but signs of violence, lots of blood and an occasional leftover piece. The local police are of course dumbfounded, and then the state police have no better explanations either. Who gets called in next? I mean, besides Ghostbusters?

Ziljon said:

Of course they would call the most eminent scientist from the local university./

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No doubt smoking a pipe and complaining that the creatures should be studied and not killed.

FinbarReilly said:

I still like the idea of teen heroes, however...FR

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That would be when the monsters pulled off their masks and said "And we would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for these meddling kids!"

Actually if I write the story I ought to kill off a lot of teen heroes just on general principles, along with obnoxious comic relief characters, the old man who walks around saying "You're all dooooooomed!", and lots of annoyingly cute pets!

Ok, thinking out loud here, my guess would be that it would go this way:

The local police would be very quick in figuring out that the situation is WAY over their heads, so they would of course call the state police. After a quick assessment of the scene to confirm that the locals are not smoking crack, they in turn would bring in detectives, forensic experts, the FBI because of the number of people missing and perhaps a wildlife expert or two.

Having concluded the obvious, which is that this is NOT the work of humans, they would evacuate all civilians within a comfortable distance and close the area to all but authorized persons.

After this is done the state police would organize a search of the nearby forest armed with the usual big boy toys, high powered rifles and shotguns, along with some hunting dogs to hopefully track whatever the boogeythings are.

Now if this effort were to say, end badly , or that they were to discover the source of the problem but dare not tackle it themselves, the next step would be to bring in the National Guard... but this is where things get fuzzy for me...

Ok, so the Guard would obviously provide the military muscle needed to hopefully contain the problem, but who handles the problems of actually figuring out what the creatures are and how to contain/destroy them? The Center of Disease Control? Department of Defense?? Scooby Doo???