Washington, D.C., Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Kevin Donahue tweeted a link to Taylor’s Facebook post, saying, “While I’m not an expert on the dance moves in this video, this is great example of community policing by MPD”.
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A police officer in Washington, D.C., approached two groups of teens in the midst of a confrontation and asked the teens to leave.
The senior at Ballou High School and the officer then whip out their best freestyle moves, according to the video, which has been viewed more than 550,000 times and received more than 9,000 shares.
“Instead of us fighting, she tried to turn it around and make it something fun”.
“I thought all cops were cruel because that’s how I saw them”, she told the Post. “There’s still a few good cops out here and that is one of them”, said Taylor. She escalated the situation into a full-on dance-off. Since then, MPD has been touting the dance-off and pushing it on its Youtube page. And even more importantly, Taylor says this was her first positive experience with a cop. The officer challenged the teen to a dance-off to a song by rapper Dlow. The officer – who requested to be unnamed so as to not make this story “about her” – is a three year street cop who recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq. No one was arrested, no one was assaulted, and Aaliyah came away with her perception of police officers completely changed.
The officer was praised for managing to diffuse the confrontation and get the teens to peacefully go their own way.
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“It’s kind of embarrassing that this became so big. Everyone was just looking at us”. “This is what we do every day”.
