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D.C. Cop Challenges Teen To Dance-Off — Aaliyah Taylor, 17, Now Believes In Good Officers

By Shelley Hazen
Published on: 04:37 PST, Oct 29, 2015

Seventeen-year-old D.C. native Aaliyah Taylor said she always thought cops were rude and cruel. But one cop changed her mind — by challenging her to a dance-off.

Aaliyah has six sisters and one brother, and all of them have been arrested for non-violent offenses. Taylor said the arresting cop was usually rude and rough, the Washington Post reported. The dance-off Monday marked her first positive interaction with police.

“I thought all cops were cruel because that’s how I saw them. I’ve now seen there are good cops out there.”

It all began Monday when police were called to break up a fight between some teens in a Washington, D.C., neighborhood park, WUSA9 reported. At the time, Taylor had the popular song, “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)” on her phone.

“As I’m stepping off, I started to dance and then the cop was like, ‘I could do better,’ and I was like, ‘OK, you want to challenge me?’ ” she told NBC Washington. “I was in shock.”

The D.C. cop then offered a unique strategy to calm the tense situation. She told the teens that if they won the dance-off, they could stay. But if the cop won the dance-off, the teens would have to leave.

Thus began a pretty epic dance-off that lasted a couple minutes. Aaliyah is obviously a skilled young dancer, but she may have met her match in the unnamed D.C. cop, who, despite 40 pounds of gear and clothing, performed admirably. After both danced to a song by rapper Dlow — while an onlooker filmed the dance-off on a cell phone, of course — Taylor thought so, too.

“I mostly hold my head down when I dance, so I didn’t really see her,” the teen recalled. “But when I looked at the video after, I was like ‘Oh, she has some moves.’ ”

The dance-off between the D.C. cop and the teenager ended when the officer got tired. Otherwise, she said she would’ve kept going. The pair declared a tie, hugged, and everyone went their separate ways. No one was arrested, no one was assaulted, and Aaliyah came away with her perception of police officers completely changed.

“Instead of us fighting, she tried to turn it around and make it something fun. I never expected cops to be that cool. There are some good cops.”

She posted the video of the dance-off with the D.C. cop on Facebook, and it has since been viewed almost 300,000 times. And this at a time when the Internet is chock full of videos depicting cops at their worst, including the latest of a school resource officer yanking an unruly teen from her desk. That officer has since been terminated.

According to the secretary of the D.C. police union, the cop’s interaction with these teens isn’t an unusual event, but most of them don’t end up online for all to see.

“We are humans just like everyone else,” she said. “Every day we come in contact with thousands of citizens and almost all of them have positive outcomes.”

The cop has since been praised by the D.C. mayor and police chief, who said the dance-off was an example of the numerous positive interactions between police and city residents that take place every day, WTOP reported. She added that this cop is well known for being a hard worker who is dedicated to her job.

But the cop doesn’t want any attention about the dance-off — she doesn’t want to make the story about her.

“It’s kind of embarrassing that this became so big. This is what we do every day.”

[Photo via Twitter / Screengrab]

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