WATCH: Police Recruiting Video Goes Overboard
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Jupiterimages/Thinkstock(NEWPORT BEACH, Calif.) — Do YOU have what it takes? Based on the high-energy, high-impact scenes of one city’s police recruiting video, one might think that it is set in one of the most crime-riddled counties in the country.
But the video was actually made and released by the Newport Beach Police Department in Southern California, considered by many to be one of the safest, ritziest places to live in California.
The video, which shows police officers jumping over walls and loading military-grade assault rifles and sniper rifles, vicious dog take-downs and a staged SWAT raid, is now the subject of mockery because of the over-the-top, ’80s-television-show production style.
The video has been available on YouTube for about four years, but didn’t garner much attention until it was posted on The Agitator in early July. The post shows two separate police departments taking two very different approaches to advertising themselves.
The Newport Beach Police Department’s video is shown alongside a police recruitment video released in 2009 by the Decatur Police Department in Georgia that displays a much more relaxed and friendly approach to law enforcement recruiting.
According to a 2009 survey by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Newport Beach’s median family income ($104,435) is about 64 percent higher than the national average ($39,138) and almost twice the amount of the rest of California ($58,931).
Newport Beach is located on the California coast within Orange County, which is one of the safest areas to live in California.
In 2010, neighboring Los Angeles County experienced 297 murders and 789 rapes. Newport Beach’s numbers didn’t even come close. In 2010, there were no murders and only four reported rapes. In fact, according to the Newport Beach Police Department’s website, the highest number of arrests was for larceny and public drunkenness incidents.
Even so, watch out, bad boys, the Newport Beach Police Department is coming for you. In the last four years since the video was released, the crime rate has decreased by 10 percent. The most dramatic change to the crime rate in Newport Beach in the last four years is a 40 percent decrease to the total number of robberies.
Calls to the Newport Beach Police Department were not returned.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio