Thanks videos viral with votes
Published 9:53 pm Wednesday, August 10, 2016
The support shown for the Suffolk Police Department recently has been so unprecedented that a simple “Thank you” just wouldn’t do.
Shootings of police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge prompted an outpouring of support that included cards, visits and plenty of food — including doughnuts — for local officers.
Maj. Stephanie Burch said Lt. John McCarley had the idea to do something special for the community, perhaps a thank-you video.
“The idea was to shoot some real simple thank-you videos,” Burch said. But then she decided to up the ante — she offered a prize.
“They are way more creative than what I could have imagined,” she said of the results.
Gracing the department’s Facebook page this week have been three videos, created by different teams of officers. They feature officers dancing, goofing off and even making fun of their love for doughnuts, all culminating in saying “Thank you” to the community.
“It gave our officers a little diversion and something fun to do in the middle of what has been a really awful season of policing,” Burch said. “They had fun doing it.”
Three teams of officers — the Investigations Division, downtown evening shift and North Suffolk day shift and Neighborhood Enforcement Teams — each made a video.
The Investigations Division featured an accomplice in its video — 6-year-old Sydnee Brown, who recently was featured in a viral video getting all the police hugs she could want from the Suffolk Police Department after being denied from an officer in another city.
Burch said she just couldn’t decide on a winner for the video contest, so they decided to leave the judging to someone else — the community at large.
The videos have been posted on the department’s Facebook page. The video that receives the most likes, shares and views combined by noon on Aug. 17 will win.
So far, the three videos have a combined 66,000 views, with the downtown team far ahead with its team dance set to the tune of “Uptown Funk.”
“That’s a testimony to the fact that people appreciate real people and fun people,” Burch said.
People are encouraged to visit the Facebook page and vote on the videos. Asked what’s at stake for the winning officers, Burch hedged.
“Food of some sort,” she said.