ORLANDO, Fla. – The head of Orlando’s Carnival Festival defended the actions of Orlando police officers who were disciplined after they were captured in a viral video in which young women can be seen dancing on the officers.
“Those officers were the best we’ve experienced in years,” said Guenet Gittens-Roberts, the chief experience officer for Orlando Carnival Downtown.
The video was taken during the annual Carnival Festival, as people danced and celebrated Caribbean culture.
Several Orlando police officers can be seen sitting on a golf cart, as young scantily clad women dance on top of the cart and at times on top of the officers.
The officers can be seen smiling and laughing, but Gittens-Roberts says the video does not capture everthing.
“The police did their job,” Gittens-Roberts said. “They actually told them to come down, but that’s missing from the video.”
An Orlando police spokesperson told News 6 that the officers involved were suspended from working extra-duty events of this nature for four months.
“The behavior displayed in the video does not reflect the professionalism expected of Orlando Police officers,” the spokesperson said. “The department does not condone this type of conduct and has launched an Internal Investigation to determine whether any department policies or regulations were violated.”
Gittens-Roberts did not think the officers deserved any discipline. In fact, she wants those specific officers to come back for future events.
“They understood what the culture was like in that event,” she said. “And what they were doing is they were looking at us and they were respecting what we were doing culturally.”
She added that she believes discipline may have been warranted if the women had been dancing on a police vehicle, but the golf cart belonged to the festival.
News 6’s Mike Valente asked Gittens-Roberts if she thinks the officers should have asked the women to get off the golf cart sooner than they did.
“I would assume that that would be something that OPD could say to the officers, ‘Listen, you’re not accustomed to this environment, you’re newer to this,’” she said. “And that’s a training moment.”