Popular Youtuber challenges Colorado Springs police to a game of hide & seek, in now viral video

MONUMENT, Colo. (KRDO) - A group of young men in Colorado Springs challenged the Colorado Springs Police Department (CSPD) to an intense game of hide and seek, seeing if they could stump detectives for one hour. The video, posted to YouTube in late August, now sits with over 10 million views.

Most criminals fail when trying to hide from CSPD, however, a popular Youtube creator, who hails from Colorado Springs decided to challenge officers to hunt him and two other friends down at a property in Monument.

The catch: Police had 1 hour to find the trio in order to win the challenge.

Matthew Doyon, who goes by the name Zealous on YouTube, approached CSPD earlier this year about the prospect of having a friendly competition. He had a good relationship with Officer Ruselis Perry in the department, who helped try and pitch the challenge to CSPD's administrators.

The department says they turn down lots of requests for collaborations with creators like Zealous, however they agreed to the challenge because they saw it was a great opportunity to allow their tactical team to get training outside in a real-life setting, as well as connect with a younger audience in the community and online.

The three young men, Matthew, Jeffrey, and Kendall, all prepared with specially created hiding spots, to try and fool CSPD, getting real creative in the process.

Doyon, who says he took a page out the blockbuster movie The Hunger Games, where a main character blends his face into the forest by painting camouflage patterns on it.

And so, the Youtuber hired a high-level makeup artist to disguise his face, as dirt and rocks to morph himself into the slope of rocky terrain within the Monument property.

"We made a little latex mask that like, helped my face blend into the rest of the cliff and then literally, like, pulled dirt and brush and everything and it just glued it to my face with some medical adhesive and then pop me in the hole, bury me up." explained the 24-year-old, Doyon.

Meanwhile, his friend Kendall built a fake air wooden structure, to mimic an air-conditioning unit that was placed next to the house on the property. His plan was to crouch and sit inside it, where even if the detectives lifted up the structure to look underneath, he could hide his feet.

Lastly, Jeffrey, whose family's property was used for the challenge, put together a floating thicket of brush to look like a beaver's habitat, where he would float on the inside in a wetsuit, to hopefully fly under the radar.

He even built in a periscope to be able to peek out and look at officers nearby, and sprayed himself with a "family recipe" of Doe urine, to try and mask his scent, should the officers bring out a K-9.

But, ultimately, police were able to find Jeffrey first out of the three young men, as he was overheard talking to his handheld camera inside his beaver dam by Officer Daniel Short, who was walking along the pond's edge at the time.

It led to a humorous chase with Jeffrey swimming away within the dam, and then swimming outright on his own. Officer Perry and Officer Short then took to a pedal-boat to finally catch him.

Perry also added that the doe urine, was a good in theory, but, not quite:

"The deer spray, I don't think would have would have thrown off our dogs at all." he said cracking a smile.

As for Kendall, Officer Perry and one other detective actually inspected the faux-air conditioning unit early on in the video, and even tilted it to the side, however Kendall was able to tuck his feet in the air. Upon seeing no one underneath, the officers left it alone.

Later on though, another pair of officers who arrived as back-up, later in the hour time frame, inspected and tilted the structure again, with one getting down on the ground to peek under, who spotted Kendall.

That meant two of 'hiders' were taken into custody. But they were still hunting for Doyon.

Officer Perry was hot on the 24-year-old's trail through most of the challenge, without knowing it. He found himself hovering in the area where Doyon was hiding as the clock wound down, unsure of what his instincts were telling him.

The Youtuber was ultimately able to outlast the 1 hour threshold, by about 5 minutes before his face was noticed in the dirt by Perry. In total Doyon was buried for about 90 minutes, making the victory taste even sweeter. However he also acknowledges, the police could have definitely brought some more effective assistance.

"If it weren't for the fact that they didn't have dogs like with them. Oh my gosh, like their dogs, we would be probably found all of us in about 5 minutes." joked Doyon.

Perry described when he finally noticed Doyon's face in the dirt.

"I just knew it was a close area with them. I'm not going to lie, when I then turned around and I saw him, it kind of freaked me out because he looks scary," said Perry, "That's why when he said that you're like, 'You're what nightmares are made of', to that lady, I was like, yeah, that's pretty much the scariest thing," he said while laughing.

Perry and another officer who are in charge of Community Outreach and Recruiting for CSPD, Daniel Short, both say that the challenge was a good opportunity to make police more relatable, in addition to the other benefits mentioned previously.

"I think the main goal was to humanize us. I mean, we are human without a doubt. Political or not, we're humans that decided to take an oath to step above and rise above a lot of the negativity that we have in society and confront it." explained Perry.

They also say that they picked a one-hour time slot that wouldn't interfere with the officers' patrols and department duties.

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