On May 4, 2017, 21 police officers from the Saanich Police Department teamed up with 100 students from the Spectrum Community School dance program to hold a flash mob at Uptown. Over the course of a week Officers attended the regularly scheduled dance classes at Spectrum and learned the dance steps to Bruno Mars’ Uptown Funk.
One of the goals of this event was to create a special relationship between students and police. This was achieved by participating in the dance classes with the students where cops and kids could laugh with each other and work towards a common goal of dancing together in a flash mob.
Dancing in public as part of a flash mob was definitely outside of most officer’s comfort zone but they were willing to step outside the box and create a special and lasting memory for our community. On the day of the flash mob there were smiles on everyone’s faces who were present at Uptown.
A big thank you to the number of our Officer’s who attended these classes on their own time and spent a significant amount of time practicing at home too. Another huge thank you goes to Lia Shannon, the Spectrum Community School dance teacher, who so expertly (and patiently) taught us the dance and gave us the space to connect with the students. It was so much fun!
The dance was professionally recorded by Roll Focus Productions and posted on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVy_0uM04e8
A/Sgt. Jereme Leslie