As a brutal heat wave smothered parts of the Northeast in 100-plus degree heat, a police department in Massachusetts asked potential criminals to chill out.

The Braintree Police Department asked potential wrongdoers to "hold off" on crime for the weekend. The department even offered alternatives to committing crimes, like binge-watching the Netflix show "Stranger Things" or just "blast" the air conditioning at home.

The community of nearly 36,000 complied.

"One of the deputy chiefs was like, 'There were no arrests over the weekend,'" Officer Peter Gillis, who is in BPD's community outreach department, told USA TODAY.

He added: "That's unheard of for the summer. We typically do like seven or eight arrests over the weekend during the summer."

Gillis, a 13-year veteran of BPD who has managed the department's Facebook page since 2008, said he likes to inject of bit of humor into the department's posts in order to "humanize the badge."

He added he's a "Stranger Things" fan.

"In today’s era, I feel like how people connect with one another, it’s very heavily social media," Gillis said. "How you talk to your family or your neighbors, it’s all social media. People report crimes on social media, they ask questions. It's really the only way we can reach out and talk to the community.

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"In the last 11 years, it’s even more important. If we need to reach out and touch our community, that’s what we have."

The post asking Braintree residents for no crime was shared more than 132,000 times.

"Due to the extreme heat, we are asking anyone thinking of doing criminal activity to hold off until Monday," the Friday Facebook post read. "It is straight up hot as soccer balls out there. Conducting criminal activity, in this extreme heat is next level henchmen status, and also very dangerous."

Braintree is about a 20-minute drive from Boston, where the heat index was more than 100 degrees, according to the Boston Globe.

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Braintree police thanked the community for taking its request seriously in a Monday post.

"We thoroughly enjoyed everyone posting on Facebook about how hot it was, the triple digit temp reading from inside their car, selfies showing how hot they were and photos of frying eggs on your driveways," the police department said on Monday.

"ZERO arrests this weekend. Big thank you to all our fans who commented, liked and shared our original post which gained the attention of nearly 12 million Facebookers."