VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) — A skateboarding police officer — that’s not something you hear about or see very often.
But recently, a Facebook video of a Virginia Beach Police officer tearing it up at a local skate park has gained traction online, gathering more than 100,000 views and 2,300 reactions in just four days.
The video, created by a 27-year-old Chesapeake skateboarder, shows the officer landing a 360 flip on a borrowed skateboard at a small “do-it-yourself” skate park on 13th Street at the Oceanfront.
Virginia Beach Police confirmed the officer’s identity as Officer Ryan Borman.
The viral video was taken by 27-year-old Sergey Whitney on April 21. He also posted several other similar videos on Instagram and TikTok — and says those videos were watched cumulatively more than a million times in just one day.
On TikTok, the videos include several captions: “This cop can skate and work,” “Cool cop skate cop,” “Fakie bigger flip!” and “Justice is served!”
Whitney said that on the day he took the videos, he traveled to the Oceanfront to meet up with some friends.
“After a while, this cop showed up and asked to use my board to hit a few tricks,” Whitney told 10 On Your Side. “To all of our surprise, he turned out to be really good and had some great control on a board.”
That was when Whitney decided to start filming. After all, an officer in uniform landing tricks on a skateboard isn’t something you see every day.
“… I figured with what’s going on in the community, it brings people together and shows that in hard times we can still enjoy the small things,” he said.
Whitney said he talked with the officer, too, and learned he had grown up skateboarding but grew out of it at some point. However, the officer told Whitney he still enjoyed skating from time to time.
“This comes from all skaters that really love it for the art of it … once a skater, always a skater,” Whitney said.
Police spokeswoman MPO Linda Kuehn said the video was unexpected, but shows the department’s officers are just “regular people.”
Kuehn continued: “The officer was just ‘being who he is’ when he spontaneously joined this group to have a bit of fun. It highlights the fact that officers are just regular people, trying to make a difference in our community. Something as simple as riding a skateboard (simple for him…I would have broken something!) was an opportunity to initiate conversation, which is part of the community policing that we talk about so often. We all think this was pretty cool…the attention he is getting may have been unprompted, but it is well deserved.”
