El Paso County is in the state of Colorado. Approximately 5000 people live in the area, and the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office is responsible for keeping them all safe. However, that’s not to say that it’s covered. Cops can’t let their hair down every now and then. In 2016, one of the department’s longest-serving officers was Deputy Tony Sherb.
Over the course of his 29-year career, he had served with the traffic unit and the transport and Court departments, but now he was about to take his retirement. Thanks to his hard work, Sherb was a highly valued member of the Sheriff’s office. In fact, many of his fellow colleagues looked up to him. Tony earned a reputation from his peers and supervisors as being highly professional and exceptionally knowledgeable. A post on the department’s Facebook page stated, that around the same time Sher was retiring, the elevators at the Sheriff’s office had been malfunctioning.
As a result, a team of technicians placed a surveillance camera on one of them to see what was going on. However, no one could have guessed what the camera would pick up. As the camera rolled, Sherb walked into the elevator in question, seemingly unaware that a camera was filming. He checked his phone before securing it in his pocket. At this point, there was nothing out of the ordinary about the scene, but at that precise moment, music began to play in the elevator.
Surprisingly, the song was the 2015 hit Watch Me Whip Nene, and things were about to become even stranger. As the music got going, Sherp threw his arms above his head and began busting a series of extraordinary moves. He also appeared to know every single word of the song, so he convincingly lipsynched along to the rapping as he cracked out the whip and Nene. But just as Sher was getting into the swing of things, another police officer entered the elevator. At First, Deputy Reid just looked at her colleague uneasily.
However, it seemed his enthusiasm was contagious because, after a little while, she couldn’t help but join in with the dancing. Together with Shirt, she shimmied around the elevator. Then the pair executed one of the song’s signature moves, the Stanky Leg. Like true professionals, however, the party came to an abrupt end when the cop’s boss, Chief Deputy Evans, entered the elevator. At this point, both Sherb and Reed stood completely still with their backs upright against the wall.
Sherb even threw Evans a salute in honor of his senior rank. But the moment that Evans stepped out of the elevator, the dancing resumed. Then, as Sherb and Reid were gyrating away, a third officer joined them, and she quickly got into the swing of things, too. The three of them soon synchronized their moves as they rocked back and forth to do the Superman. There was still room for one more person to join the action, though, and that’s when Sheriff Bill Elder entered the lift.
Momentarily, the three cops stopped, apparently anxious about their boss’s reaction. However, when the Sheriff busted out his own moves, the rest immediately followed suit. The epic two-and-a-half-minute clip finished with the four cops jigging merrily together, following the delightful skip. Then the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office decided to post the clip to its Facebook page. It thought the video was a fitting tribute to Sherb’s dedication to public service, but no one expected the clip to go viral.
Still, since the Sheriff’s office posted the clip on social media in January of 2016, 7 million people have viewed it. Many praise the cops involved for showing a more human side to law enforcement too. I’ve watched this about 30 times and it’s absolutely hilarious, one viewer wrote on Facebook in 2016. It’s nice to see officers having fun as their jobs are so stressful. I worked for a Sheriff’s Department in West Virginia for many years and we never had a Sheriff that enjoyed cutting it up with his employees.
We just thought, hey, let’s do something fun to celebrate his retirement, said Jacqueline Kirby, media relations manager for the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office. In the end, the response was way more overwhelming than we thought it would be, especially for a law enforcement agency and the video certainly had the intended effect. What we hope people see is that even though officers serve and protect as their main duty, they are human, Kirby explained. They can have fun and that’s what we did. And it seems that Deputy Sherv was in on the joke the entire time.
Tony is probably one of the most hilarious nicest deputies I’ve ever met, Kirby revealed. He’s had a stellar, stellar career and he’s going to be greatly missed. Just a quality person and a quality deputy. Following his famous elevator antics shirt retired. It’s safe to say then that his big personality will be missed all around the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office, However.