The story behind the Honolulu Police Department’s #LipSyncChallenge video

The Honolulu Police Department has finally joined the summer’s hottest public safety social media campaign, producing a slick video with officers dancing and performing from Waikiki to Chinatown.

“Serving and Protecting with ALOHA” is HPD’s answer to the #LipSyncChallenge, the viral phenomenon capturing the imagination of the country’s police, fire and emergency services communities.

The mastermind behind Honolulu’s video is Officer Don Faumuina, who became intrigued a few months ago by the growing number of #Lip SyncChallenge videos online.

Friends had asked him why HPD didn’t have an entry. Colleagues on social media were tagging him on the videos and offering up some ideas.

“I had this wild thought: Why don’t I just ask the chief?” said Faumuina, an officer whose beat includes Downtown, Chinatown and Kakaako.

Chief Susan Ballard granted him an appointment and he gave his pitch.

“Half way through, she stopped me and said, ‘OK let’s do it, I love it.’”

That was surprising enough, he said, but then she asked him to lead the project.

“When the chief tells you to do something, you do it,” he said.

Faumuina said he had no previous video production experience, but dozens of volunteers from the department stepped up to help, many of them performing during more than 2-1/2 weeks of filming. In the end, he said, the department’s audio-visual team did “all the magic.”

The video is more than six minutes of HPD officers fire dancing, dragon dancing, break dancing, hula dancing, paddling, bicycling, four-wheeling and, of course, lip-syncing around the island. Ballard and Deputy Chief John McCarthy are among the featured officers.

While the show begins with a recreation of the opening to “Hawaii Five-0,” it quickly moves to officers lip syncing to the Mana‘o Company’s “Spread A Little Aloha.”

Faumuina said he wanted the diversity of the department to shine.

“Behind that uniform we have coaches, fathers, aunties and uncles — those who do things besides our HPD work. The idea for me was to show the talent and skills of the men and women of the police department,” he said.

Department spokeswoman Michelle Yu said HPD didn’t spend anything on the project other than the department’s audio-­visual team helping to put the video together as part of their normal job. She said it will be used as a recruiting video posted at joinhonolulupd.org.

According to media reports, #LipSyncChallenge videos went viral this summer after a Texas deputy sheriff posted a video of himself lip-syncing. Since then, hundreds of agencies have answered the challenge with increasingly impressive and elaborate entries.

Several media outlets have already ranked some of the best videos, including USA Today and the website PoliceOne.com.

Faumuina said some have asked him why Honolulu is so late to the party. He responded, “We’re not late, we’re on Hawaiian time. That’s just how we do things.”