I always thought this program was pretty cool.
As a brother to a police officer myself, it’s always really cool to see local police helping out the community with an event named ‘Santa Cop.’ This event brings Cedar Rapids officers together where they take children from about 100 families shopping for winter items like coats, sleds, gloves…and maybe something like a toy to bring them a smile.
Unfortunately this year because of the ongoing pandemic, it was forced to be cancelled this year. However they are working to still bring the cheer this year by benefitting Coats for Kids, so kids STILL get the winter stuff they need for this cold season.
In an interview with The Gazette and Cedar Rapids Mental Health Officer Charity Hansel: At about the same time that we — the board — decided we couldn’t do the Santa Cop program, KCRG was doing their Coats for Kids event, so I reached out to them to see if there was a way we could help with that program. The Cedar Rapids Police Protective Charity had $10,000 earmarked for the Santa Cop event, so we thought maybe we could donate that money to Coats for Kids. The catch was that I wanted to make sure our donations went to local kids and the Coats for Kids event reaches something like 19 counties on the eastern side of Iowa. But since we were planning to donate such a substantial amount we were able to designate that the coats we purchased stayed local, and I think the event ended up raising more than $40,000 in total, which is great.
You can read the full interview here from The Gazette below.
