Orange County Sheriff's Office Makes Video for #KeepDancingOrlando Challenge After Pulse Nightclub Tragedy
The challenge was created to honor the Pulse nightclub victims.
— -- Weeks after three horrific tragedies hit the Orlando area, the Orange County Sheriff's Department has found a way to keep the city's spirits up.
A video posted to the Orange County Sheriff's Office's Facebook page begins with a mock press conference announcing an “important announcement by Sheriff Demings.”
“We’re here for an important announcement today. I wanna keep Orlando smiling. Keep dancing, Orlando!” Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings said before placing a boom box on top of the podium.
“Hit it,” Demings says, and when he presses play, the unmistakable beat for Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” starts to play.
Demings begins to dance first, sliding enthusiastically, and members of the OCSO soon follow suit.
The onlooking crowd, acting as members of the press for the video, cheer and throw up the papers they’re holding to join in on the dancing.
The dancing continues outside the OCSO headquarters, police training facilities, forensics lab and between cubicles in the office. Seemingly every OCSO employee participates, including police officers standing next to their motorcycles, a crowd in the office holding up American flags and a police K9 dancing with its handler.
One officer break dances in the courtyard, while another employee does the worm in the office. An officer piloting a helicopter even joins in on the action, and Demings is seen at the end leading a round of the electric slide.
The #KeepDancingOrlando challenge was created to channel positive energy and honor the 49 victims of the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub on June 12, the OCSO wrote on Facebook.
“Hundreds of OCSO employees came together as a unit, group or individually to demonstrate that we stand together united with our community and as Americans,” the OCSO wrote.
Two days before the Pulse tragedy, singer Christina Grimmie, a former contestant for “The Voice,” was shot and killed in Orlando after a concert at The Plaza Live. Two days after the nightclub shooting, a 2-year-old boy was dragged into a lake at Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort & Spa. His body was found the next day.
It looks like the challenge is working. In just over an hour, the video garnered thousands of likes on Facebook. It’s difficult not to smile after watching the silly antics the sheriff’s office put on.
