After approaching several groups of teenagers and asking them to disperse, a D.C. police officer found herself in an epic dance-off on the sidewalk!
When 17-year-old Aaliyah Taylor was told to move, she walked up to the female officer and started dancing to “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)”.
Instead of cracking down on the teen doing the Nae Nae dance, Aaliyah says the police officer laughed and declared that her dance moves were better.
What happened next took everyone by surprise: the female officer and Aaliyah broke it down in a dance-off! The fun-loving cop held her own on the footpath dance floor, garnering cheers and applause from onlookers.
It’s a shining example of positive policing in the wake of countless accusations of discriminatory and abusive police tactics in the US.
“Instead of us fighting, she tried to turn it around and make it something fun,” Aaliyah said. “I never expected cops to be that cool. There are some good cops.”
Aaliyah said the cop told the group if the teen won the dance-off, they could stay. The pair danced for several minutes until Aaliyah got tired, so they declared it a tie. Aaliyah and the police officer hugged and everyone happily dispersed.
“I mostly hold my head down when I dance, so I didn’t really see her,” Aaliyah said. “But when I looked at the video after, I was like ‘Oh, she has some moves.’”
The D.C. police have confirmed the officer in the video is with their department, but did not reveal her name. The secretary of the D.C. police union, Marinos Marinos, said these kinds of interactions aren’t uncommon. He gave kudos to the officer for holding her own whilst wearing over 40 pounds of equipment!
“We are humans just like everyone else,” Marinos said. “Everyday we come in contact with thousands of citizens and almost all of them have positive outcomes.”
