Crew invited to ‘dance off’ at police station after officer hits member with his car

A Florida police department has invited a group of friends to a “dance off” after one of its officers hit a member of the crew with his car.

One of the young men, called Jayy, recorded the encounter and uploaded it to TikTok on Sunday. It has since racked up more than 12.4 million views and more than 1.7 million likes.

The video shows the squad doing a routine outside a petrol station in the US city of Tampa as a white police car pulls up with its lights flashing and siren blasting.

As it approaches, the car knocks into one of the dancers, leaving him looking stunned and breaking away from his pals.

Unaware that their friend has been hit, the rest of the group continue their upbeat choreography until the car stops behind them.

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The officer then steps out and grabs the rolling speaker they had been using for the performance.

A follow-up video, shared by Instagram user @t.eian, whose name is Eian Rivera, shows the group speaking to the cop after the music stopped playing.

The officer says they were “blaring music in the middle of the night,” but the men argue that there had been no complaints.

He retorts: “If I’m driving and there’s a robbery going on, do they have to call me for that?”

The friends then argue that it’s not a robbery, it’s a TikTok dance video.

One of them then reveals that this type of confrontation happens a lot: “Police actually do that, they turn up in our video,” he says.

The group then criticise the cop for not getting out of the car to speak to them or issue them with a warning, instead hitting one of them with a car and snatching their speaker.

One then makes the point: “We’re not here in the streets, we’re doing a good job. You talk about robberies, we’re not doing robberies.

“We’re just trying to make this make sense.”

A few minutes later, another police car turns up at the scene. Jayy told the DailyDot that two backup officers joined them and the dancers had to wait 30 minutes before their speaker was finally returned.

Following the incident, a screenshot shared by Jayy with the news site showed they had received a message from the Tampa Police Department.

In the DM, a person identifying themselves as the department’s public information officer (PIO) responded to Rivera’s Instagram story.

The PIO said: “We now challenge you and your crew to a dance off at Tampa Police Headquarters!” followed by a contact number.

“We will provide the car and lights for your video! Let’s make it happen,” followed by an angel emoji.

The screengrab shared with Daily Dot

Approached for a statement, the Tampa Police Department told the Daily Dot that it could not comment on the encounter.

It is not yet clear whether the friends will take up the “dance off” offer.

We, for one, would watch it with great interest.