What were they thinking?

If you haven’t seen the Butte County Sheriff’s Office’s lip-sync battle video, please take a moment (actually, about four minutes) to watch as members of local law enforcement take part in a public relations phenomenon.

For the uninitiated, the so-called lip-sync challenge has been accepted by cop shops from Virginia to San Francisco. In Butte County, the effort was met with a spectacular kind of enthusiasm, the overzealous kind. A couple more adjectives: embarrassing, wasteful, ill-timed.

Here’s an overview: Dozens of personnel from the Butte County Sheriff’s Office dance (or attempt to dance—rhythm is hard for some folks) to Brooks and Dunn’s “Boot Scootin’ Boogie.”

We at the CN&R have nothing against early-’90s mainstream country, per se, but we certainly would’ve suggested a song that didn’t portray our region as a redneck booze-swillin’ backwater—or, as the song puts it, “Out in the country where … they got whiskey, women, music and smoke.”

Sheriff Kory Honea doesn’t get his groove on, but he appears in the video. That means he was all right with the amount of resources poured into it.

We noted deputies and other personnel from various units—dispatch, K-9, marine, corrections, air, among others. Yes, there’s a boat and a helicopter in this example of unmitigated wasted taxpayer dollars. This isn’t already filmed footage, folks. There’s a long shot of said helicopter flying in behind a sheriff’s SUV and then landing moments before a couple of deputies jump out and start “dancing.” The boat and its boogie-ing occupants are captured by drone. (Go to facebook.com/bcsonews).

But let’s talk about the backdrop.

Nationwide, the lip-sync challenge is a way to counter the tarnished image law enforcement agencies have been saddled with in the wake of rampant police brutality, including the shooting deaths of civilians.

Butte County has had its share of controversy in recent years. Take, for example, the racial discrimination case winding its way through federal court based on a longtime deputy’s allegations of harassment. Or, think about the multiple sheriff’s employees convicted of sexual activity with jail inmates.

As you’ll read in our Newslines section this week, the Butte County Sheriff’s Office is named in a lawsuit filed by the children of a Palermo woman who was shot to death in April.

In short, it’s going to take a lot more than a feel-good singalong to get back in good standing. Our advice: BCSO needs to get its priorities straight.