Watch: Fort Worth police aren’t trying to sell you a used car. They’re trying to hire you
Fort Worth police are taking a new approach to recruiting officers amid a nationwide struggle to fully staff police departments: a used car commercial.
A new recruitment video from the department features Officer Buddy “Big B” Calzada touting the benefits of working for the Fort Worth Police Department, from the vehicles to the SWAT team to the horses to the pay.
The video, with its terrible graphics and Calzada’s booming voice stylizing the production like a late-night commercial from a used car lot, has already racked up more than 57,000 views on YouTube as of Tuesday afternoon, as well as heaps of praise in the comment section.
The video has been called inspired, fresh and effective by YouTube viewers, with some even saying Calzada deserves a raise (or, from one commenter, a job as a serious character actor in Hollywood) for his high-energy performance. Plenty of viewers have commented that if they’d seen the video when they were younger, they would have signed up to join the department right away.
Most impressive to some: the fact that the video had no cuts.