The Tampa Police Department has a video that has gone "viral" with 45,000+ views. TPD seems really proud of this if you read the comments on the TPD YouTube channel.
Maybe TPD wanted to show a softer side after its military-like occupation of downtown Tampa during the 2012 RNC convention. A few weeks before the convention a TPD officer told me that he was told to expect 70,000 anarchists with baseball bats.
Although that prediction was thankfully wrong, the police force in place could have probably handled 70,000 anarchists with baseball bats. The entire downtown was shut down. Downtown businesses, schools, and the courthouse were all essentially closed.
Downtown Tampa looked like a ghost town except for a massive police presence marching around the empty downtown area in military formation. Law enforcement officers outnumbered the protesters several times over. Ten foot fences were erected to keep the protesters within confined areas. It was massive overkill.
The Republican National Convention was suppose to bring a lot of money to the Tampa Bay area. That benefit is greatly diminished when law enforcement shuts down the city for a week.
But now that the RNC is gone, the Tampa Police Department is in the limelight again. This time the TPD officers are all dancing to Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe."
Update: Apparently no one watches TPD videos unless the officers look ridiculous. So TPD made another video. The first one was kind of funny, but at some point they need to spend their valuable resources doing actual work.
