FARGO -- The weather was perfect here Tuesday night for some basketball, so Bruce Shields, Jr. and some buddies headed to the courts at Dike West in downtown Fargo to do just that.

It looked like the fun was over, though, when a group of 10 police officers on bicycles rolled up nearby. Shields says a couple of friends grumbled that it might be time to break up the game.

“I got on them and told them to calm down,” Shields, a senior communication student at Concordia College, says. “(The police) were just watching from a distance.”

It so happened that the group of police were on bikes as part of a training exercise and wanted to use the hill at Dike West to work on a couple of maneuvers. But recent construction there presented an obstacle, so it didn’t look like that was going to happen.

“We were at a loss with what to do,” says Detective Grant Kendall who, along with another instructor, was training in the eight other officers.

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What happened next flies in the face of our dominant cultural image of police interaction with the public.

Rather than hassle the guys, or simply go on their way, the cops joined in for the next game of pickup basketball.

Shields took a break from the game to record the scene on video and post it to his Facebook page, where it has since been viewed over 120,000 times. He calls the experience “amazing.”

“There’s not too much of this going on everywhere,” Shields says. “All we see are videos on Facebook of cops beating people or yelling at people. It’s why I love Fargo and Minnesota,” the Seattle native adds, “and I noticed the difference right away when I came here.”

Fargo police are doing everything they can to combat the image many people have of law enforcement.

“For most of us in law enforcement, we take any opportunity like this that we get,” Kendall says. “That mistrust doesn’t need to happen here. I like to think we have a good relationship with the community, especially with the youth, and this is a way to reinforce that.”

The game, if you’re curious, was won by the officers 7-5. Kendall says the group stays in tip-top shape and had a bit of swagger under their Kevlar vests.

“When we walked out, we had the utmost confidence we would give them a run for their money,” he says.

Shields was impressed.

“They were definitely playing hard. It was a pretty physical game, and it surprised me how well they moved in their uniforms. There was no holding back,” although Shields says the bigger game at play was far more important.

“It was a great time, and a great opportunity to form an alliance with them.” It was such a great opportunity, he says, he might just start up some kind of basketball tournament involving area law enforcement and the public.