When Const. Jordan Sheppard went to work on Saturday, he had no idea he would wake up the next morning an internet celebrity.
Sheppard, a 10-year veteran of the Halifax Regional Police, was working in downtown Halifax when he was caught on camera busting some pretty impressive dance moves.
Just a few days after the video was posted online, it’s gone viral.
“It’s remarkable. I can’t believe the attention that it’s getting,” Sheppard told Global News. “I’m just a person that loves his job and happens to wear a uniform and apparently when you go dancing in it this is the reaction you get.”
READ: Halifax police officer busts a move at city’s late night hangout Pizza Corner
Sheppard says he and his coworkers were working in an area as Pizza Corner – the intersection of Blowers and Grafton streets and a popular late-night pizza hangout – when one of his colleagues approached Pizza Girls and asked them to play a song.
Sheppard says he had no idea that his colleague requested the restaurant play Silento’s ‘Watch Me’ a.k.a. the Whip/Nae Nae song.
Once the jam came on, Sheppard says he looked at his coworker, and then his supervisor who told him to do his thing.
“I just started to dance and have fun with it,” he says.
WATCH: An intersection that houses Halifax’s Pizza Corner, saw late night revelers and at least one Halifax Regional Police officer bust a move on Saturday night.
Sheppard says the impromptu street dance wasn’t staged or part of any online lip sync challenge.
“It certainly wasn’t staged at all. This is just something that if I can describe it in one word it would be spontaneity,” he said.
According to Sheppard, having some fun and dancing with some local residents is just one way to break down barriers.
“I believe any chance we can take as an organization to take a chance to have a positive interaction with the community then we’ll certainly do that and jump on it,” he said.
“There is a lot of negativity publicity and perception from the public to the police so I hope this just gave everybody an opportunity to see that we are human. We just have a job to do and I know I like to have fun doing my job and here we are.”
As for his sweet dance moves, they apparently run in the Sheppard family.
“I have to give credit to Mom, I love you,” he said.
Const. John MacLeod, a spokesperson for the force, says it’s good for residents to see police officers as a member of the community.
“What it does I think is it lets them see who we are. We’re just people out doing a job that we love to do,” he said. “They’re good people that just want to show folks that they’re doing their job that they love being and here to serve the community.”
READ: Halifax-area cat’s encounter with snake becomes online hit
While Sheppard’s dancing continues to make waves online, this isn’t the first time that the Halifax Regional Police have found themselves in the spotlight after their officers were caught doing good deeds.
In July 2015, a photo of Const. Shawn Currie writing a fake parking ticket to a three-year-old boy on the Halifax waterfront made headlines around the world.
READ: ‘It’s just unbelievable’: Picture of 3-year-old getting fake parking ticket goes viral
Currie was thrust into the spotlight a second time less than a year later. In May 2017, a photo of the officer sitting on Spring Garden Road and having a conversation with a panhandler went viral one day after a passerby snapped a photo of the heartwarming encounter.
WATCH: Photo of Halifax police officer spending time with panhandler goes viral
And who can forget the officer appropriately dubbed “The Animal Whisperer.”
Const. Andrew Gordon was praised in social media for a string of animal rescues. He was one of the officers who rescued a seal pup in March 2015, saved multiple ducklings the following month and even helped reunite a service dog named Marley with his family after the pup went missing.
Gordon is currently recovering after he was stabbed in the line of duty earlier this year.