'Dancing while my nan's house was being burgled': Police face backlash after officers covered in coloured paint bust moves at town's Holi Festival

A local police force have faced backlash after officers were pictured covered in coloured paint dancing at the town's Holi Festival. 

The Swindon Police force uploaded the video to its social media platform of the two on-duty officers dancing to music during the celebration, with coloured paint splattered all over their uniforms.

However, the video was soon deleted after frustrated locals began to question why they were dancing around and not doing their jobs. 

One user commented below the post: 'This was in Swindon, meanwhile my Nan's house was being burgled.' 

Holi is a Hindu festival that celebrates the arrival of spring and the end of winter in Hindu culture, Hindus will go into the streets and smear each other with paint as part of the tradition.

The Facebook post from the force read: 'Some of our Swindon neighbourhood officers attended the Holi festival in Town Gardens at the weekend. Holi is a popular Hindu festival celebrated as the Festival of Colours, Love and Spring.

'It was a wonderful day of celebration and officers enjoyed getting involved with some of the dancing and engaging with our local Hindu community.'

Another disheartened person said: 'Wrong on every level, should be there to do [their] job and not dancing in the street. Not fit to be officers.'

Swindon is the most dangerous city in Wiltshire, and is among the top 20 most dangerous overall out of Wiltshire's 272 towns, villages, and cities. 

The overall crime rate in Swindon in 2023 was 97 crimes per 1,000 people. This compares poorly to Wiltshire's overall crime rate, coming in 73 per cent higher than the Wiltshire rate of 56 per 1,000 daytime population.

And compared to the national crime rate, Swindon is 10 per cent above the average. 

A spokesperson for Wiltshire Police said: 'Our recent post highlighted positive community engagement by members of our neighbourhood team, joining with members of the public in Swindon who were celebrating the Holi Festival.

'We welcome a variety of comments on our Facebook posts which represent a mix of opinions.'

Back in 2022 officers also faced fury again over being filmed joining in with a performance of the Macarena at a Pride festival 

The then chair of the Police and Crime Committee at the Greater London Authority, Susan Hall, told MailOnline at the time: 'We should not have uniformed police doing the Macarena when they should be doing their jobs.'

Meanwhile in 2019, a lip-syncing policeman, wearing rainbow epaulettes and a Hawaiian garland of flowers, performed moves from the music video to the Steps' hit Scared Of The Dark at Brighton Pride.

And back in 2017, PC Daniel Graham made headlines for entertaining carnival-goers at the Notting Hill festival with his moves while on duty.

The dancing policeman was even told 'you must be an undercover raver' while manning barriers at the carnival.