Police: Lip-Synching, Dancing — and Protecting

By Rob Schwarzwalder Published on July 29, 2018

Police and lip-syncing would seem to go together about like ice cream and hot sauce.

But all around the country, videos of police departments dancing and “singing” to pop songs have become an internet sensation. Consider just one example: the Norfolk, Virginia police department’s performance of “Uptown Funk,” done in one take, now has 70 million views.  

Some of the music, widely accepted by our culture, has words and allusions Christians find objectionable. But in the scores, maybe hundreds, of videos by police across the country, from big city departments to small town units, we’re seeing pride, fun, and unity.  

Maybe that’s why these performances have become so popular, why they have touched such a national chord.

Police are People Too!

After years of being portrayed as insensitive or worse, law enforcement spontaneously decided to show America who they are: just people. People of every color, size, and shape.  Men and women.  Urban and rural.  

They are not humanizing themselves.  They are displaying that they’re human. People with families and homes, people who laugh and dance and sing. Ordinary fellow citizens who care a lot about their communities and their comrades-in-arms.

They are not saints, nor would they ever pretend to be. From Selma to Staten Island, there have been too many incidences of brutality. Of police being violent and showing the raw, ugly face of racism.

But this slice of the law enforcement pie is small by comparison to so much good the men and women in blue, and their plain clothes compatriots, do every day.  

I’m not talking about charitable efforts, although there are certainly many of these. I’m talking about the fact the hundreds of millions of us go to sleep on quiet streets because of the risks taken on our behalf by those we pay to keep us safe.

A Dangerous Duty

Think you have a risky job?  Maybe so, but consider the realities faced by the roughly 900,000 men and women protecting and serving. Here are some compelling facts from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

  • “The rate of fatal work injuries for police officers in 2014 was 13.5 per 100,000 full-time equivalent workers, compared to 3.4 for all occupations.”
  • “The rate of nonfatal occupational injuries and illnesses involving days away from work among police officers was 485.8 cases per 10,000 full-time workers in 2014; the rate was 107.1 cases for all occupations.”

In 2016, there were more than 58,000 assaults on police officers nationwide. And in the first seven months of this year, 85 officers of the law have been killed in the line of duty. Here are three of the most recent:

 Officer Bronson K. Kaliloa of Hawaii “was killed after he was shot multiple times during a traffic stop.” He leaves his wife and three children.

Deputy Sheriff Theresa King and Deputy Sheriff Patrick Rohrer with the Wyandotte County Sheriff’s Office in Kansas were shot June 15 when they were ‘overcome by an inmate being transferred from jail to the courthouse’.”

“While responding to a suspicious vehicle call on May 21, Police Officer Amy Caprio with the Baltimore County Police Department” was murdered when, during a burglary, the driver of the get-away car intentionally struck her.

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There are, of course, the daily sacrifices most of us don’t consider. Families wondering if their dads or moms will come home at night.  Who lie awake praying and hoping and listening for the muffled closing of a car door, the deliberate placing of a key in a lock, the soft tread of rubber-soled shoes on the entry carpet.

With typical eloquence, Ronald Reagan captured the tensions of being a police officer. In a 1981 speech to the International Association of Chiefs of Police, he said, “The pressures are enormous. You must be administrator, financier, social worker, public relations expert, even politician, and still, somehow, always be a cop … I commend you for manning the thin blue line that holds back a jungle which threatens to reclaim this clearing we call civilization.”

Let ‘Em Dance

So now let’s return to those videos.  One of my sons, 20 years old, summed up the recent videos by saying they “show the police as kind and loving people, not brutal or bigoted.”  Amen.  

Police dancing?  Maybe vanilla and Texas Pete aren’t so bad, after all.

 

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