Columbus police officers posted a lip sync video for the ages Monday, attempting to “break the Internet” and challenge other departments with a celebrity surprise.
The 4-minute video, part of a lip sync craze that’s taken over public service agencies nationwide, was filmed Wednesday and Thursday during the officers’ free time. It involved 10 to 12 hours of filming, going into the early morning hours, edited down to the length of a music video.
Packed with its share of surprises, the biggest comes at the beginning. Columbus native and NASCAR champion Tony Stewart, driving his own black truck, is chased by three female Columbus Police Department officers to the tune of Sammy Hagar’s 1984 release, “I Can’t Drive 55.”
There is a clue that you’re about to see Stewart in the truck, which goes airborne over an unidentified county road hill. A close-up of the driver’s hands show his championship rings while gripping the steering wheel.
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“Professional driver on closed course,” text on the video warns. “Do not attempt.”
As he stops and gets out of the truck, Stewart raises his hands as the 1983 Bonnie Tyler tune, “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” plays, and the Columbus officers lip sync the “turn around” part to Stewart as he responds, at one point with a wink, “Every now and then I fall apart.”
The video then careens through the Columbus Police locker room, where officers recreate Britney Spears’ 1999 “Oh Baby One More Time,” a group dance to “Don’t Stop Believin’” by Journey from 1981 in Mill Race Park and the “Friends” television show intro, staged in the Cummins fountain downtown, complete with the officers getting completely soaked, in uniform.
“We worked really hard on this and we had a lot of fun,” said Sgt. Courtney Plummer, who collaborated with Columbus East High School resource officer Julie Quesenbery, officer Angie Owens and Lt. Matt Harris, the department’s public information officer, to recruit officers for the filming.
The video had more than 156,000 views in two hours after it was posted, Harris said. Local residents had been asking when the department was going to do the challenge, he said.
The police officer lip sync video craze started in 2012 in Florida, and videos from other departments are plentiful on social media. But this is the only one that features Stewart.
The idea of having Stewart being stopped by Columbus officers came from an online meme Plummer had seen. They asked the racing legend to participate.
“He was a really good sport,” Plummer said. “The wink is fantastic.”
Harris admitted that Stewart didn’t know until he arrived for shooting that lip sync performance would be involved. But Stewart was professional, polite and patient and blocked off the entire evening to do the chase scene and the impromptu song, Harris said.
At one point, the NASCAR champion was down on the pavement holding up a speaker so the CPD officers could hear what they were lip syncing to during filming, Harris said.
While the camera angle is a little misleading, Harris said it is Stewart jumping the hill in his truck in the video, with a bit of enhancement by professional editing.
Officer Ben Quesenbery, who was working the police department desk Monday afternoon, joked he was just hanging around waiting to be discovered after the video went out on social media, and the officers’ phones and Facebook pages began to light up with calls and comments.
No one had to twist his arm to sing a Britney Spears song or play “Joey” of “Friends” fame in the fountain scene, he said.
The only issue for him occurred when he thought he would be singing to a Whitney Houston song during the locker room scene, and the Britney Spears song was subbed in instead. He watched a video of the song a few times and winged it, he said.
“I was in front of the line to do this,” he said.
The swimming-pool-temperature water in the Cummins fountain was a foot deep at the edge and 3 to 4 feet deep closer to the fountain. At the end of the filming, the dressed-in-blue “Friends” cast picked up Plummer and promptly dropped her face-first into the water, which Plummer knew was bound to happen.
Ben Quesenbery said the chance to clown around in uniform was a rare opportunity for him and the others.
“People call us when they have something bad going on and we try to help as best we can,” he said. “This was a chance to act goofy surrounded by my buds.”
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The Columbus Police Department lip sync video is on the Columbus Police Department (Indiana) Facebook page at:
facebook.com/Columbus-Police-Department-Indiana-112941875405001/
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