Detroit Police leads the 'Running Man' dancing challenge as craze sweeps US cities
The video of the dancing police in the Motor City has amassed more than 7 million views
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Your support makes all the difference.A video of Detroit Police Department doing the “Running Man” challenge and dancing all over town has amassed millions of views.
Now Detroit police has passed over the baton - or thrown down a donut, in this case - to police departments in Cincinnati, Philadelphia and Chicago in a bid to align police officers with communities.
Detroit Police Chief James Craig issued the challenge to the three other cities at the end of the video, which is set to Ghost Town DJ’s 1996 song “My Boo”.
“This is really about the image of the city and the department,” Mr Craig told the Detroit News. ”When people see that we’re human, they’re more willing to talk to us."
The dancing challenge, which has a viral hashtag on social media called “#RunningMan”, was started by two teenagers in Maryland and caught on in college basketball teams before capturing the nation’s attention.
New York and Los Angeles police departments have already accepted the challenge but the dance moves around the Motor City have raised the bar.
The first police department to accept the challenge was in New Zealand on 3 May, and they invited other departments around the world to get involved.
Since then, the ticket to viral success has spread to Australia, London and New York.
It is yet to be seen whether other police departments in the US will follow suit.
Chicago, which has faced a large-scale issue of police violence against black people like Laquan McDonald, a 17-year-old who was shot 16 times by a white police officer, has shown slightly more hesitation to get involved.
“After seeing the fancy footwork of our friends in Detroit, we were certainly impressed, but we have some work to do to dust off our dancing shoes,” Chicago Police Department spokesman Anthony Guglielmi told the Chicago Tribune.
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