A YouTube video of a Delaware police officer enthusiastically lip-syncing to Taylor Swift’s Shake it Off went viral on Saturday, shooting past one million views and rewarding the department which made it.

The video, which was posted to the Dover police department’s Facebook page on Friday with an accompanying apology to Swift, shows the bald and burly Master Corporal Jeff Davis in uniform, driving a patrol car while lip-syncing to the pop song – sassy head rolls and finger-pointing included.

The video had reached 845,000 YouTube views by Saturday afternoon and more than 1.1 million by the early evening.

Unlike some such hits, the video was made to attract such attention. Title cards before Davis begins his performance herald “a Dover Police Department Public Affairs Production” and announce: “While reviewing in-car cameras, we tend to see some ‘interesting’ things…

“We decided to share some of them with you in a new series called ‘Dash Cam Confessionals’.”

Police forces across the US have struggled recently with their public image, in light of protests over the perceived use of force against minorities and the desirability or constitutionality of footage from dashboard and body-mounted cameras.

A department spokesman, Captain Mark Hoffman, told the Associated Press on Saturday that he had taken calls about the video from news outlets in Australia, Britain, Germany and throughout the US.

On Saturday a Dover police statement posted to Facebook heralded the video’s appearance on Fox, ABC and CBS television.

Hoffman said Davis, a 19-year veteran, was “the class clown” and had loved making the video. The 48-year-old father of four knew the song so well because of his 10-year-old daughter, Hoffman said.