YPD takes on Lip Sync Challenge
While it may have taken a while to make, the long-awaited Yuma Police Department Law Enforcement Lip Sync Challenge video has been released, and Sgt. Lori Franklin says she thinks it was well worth the wait.
Franklin explained that numerous Yuma residents, after watching other law enforcement lip sync challenge videos, had been clamoring for the department to enter the fray, but it took time to assemble the participants and come up with a concept.
“I think it came out well and everybody had a good time doing it,” Franklin said. “It was meant to be entertaining.”
Released on Thursday, the video is 8 minutes and 24 seconds in length and was posted on the department’s Facebook page. Work on the video began in August, with the officers writing the script and picking out the music.
The video begins with Sgt. Franklin informing Chief of Police John Lekan about the community’s request for a lip sync video and him telling her to round up some officers to get it done.
After rounding up some officers, we next see a concert-like performance in the YPD parking garage with officers lip syncing to Justin Timberlake’s song “Suit and Tie” in front of squad cars with their red and blue emergency lights flashing.
Franklin added that officers chose the song because
they had never seen it in a lip sync challenge, and that there was a meaning behind it.
“They get dressed up in their uniforms every day to go out and do their job,” Franklin said. “To them, that is their suit and tie.”
In a turn of events, officers then respond to a call at Gateway Park where they chase a suspect to heavy metal music from the rock band Disturbed, before shifting back to more lip syncing underneath Yuma’s iconic Oceanto-Ocean Bridge.
Franklin wanted to add that the video was made at no cost to taxpayers because the officers and civilian employees who participated did so on their time off. It was also filmed and edited in-house by a YPD civilian employee.