Actor and rapper Ice-T told his 1.8 million Twitter followers Thursday that he called police after he was “robbed” at a gas station in New Jersey.

“I was robbed at a gas station in NJ last night,” the Law & Order star tweeted on Thursday morning. “After my hands stopped trembling.. I managed to call the cops and they were quick to respond and calmed me down….. My money is gone.. the police asked me if I knew who did it.. I said yes… it was pump number 9…”

The tweet quickly went viral and over the next two hours it earned 26,000 retweets and 155,000 likes.

While the rapper was making a rueful joke about gas prices, it hasn’t been a laughing matter for many.

The situation has gotten so dire in California, the state with the highest gas prices in the nation, that authorities are warning residents to be on the lookout for gasoline thieves.

Gas prices of more than $7.00 per gallon are posted at a downtown Los Angeles gas station on March 9, 2022. (FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images)

It is so bad that a fenced-in parking lot for Sacramento law enforcement vehicles was broken into and gas tanks were drained by brazen thieves.

Elsewhere, in Houston, Texas, a family-owned gas station was robbed of 1,000 gallons of $5 per-gallon diesel fuel causing the business a $5,000 loss of product.

Gasoline and diesel is not the only energy product being targeted by crooks. On March 10, a church in Maine discovered that thieves had stolen 200 gallons of heating oil from its outside storage tanks. It was a nearly $1,000 loss to the church.

The price of gasoline has become a problem for Democrats looking to win elections in November. It is so bad that 61 percent of Americans say they are cutting back spending on other things to be able to continue to afford to drive.

A poll conducted early this month found that “81% of American Adults say rising gasoline prices are a serious problem for their personal budget, including 56% who say higher gas prices are a Very Serious problem.” A scant “18% don’t consider the rising cost of gasoline a serious problem.”

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