Public Relations

The Lamar Police Department had a busy year. We spent a lot of time chasing, and catching, bad guys. However, we saved enough time to do what we all love to do most, play with the citizens of this great town. We had old favorites like Fish with a Cop and Bike Day, and continued with our second annual Shop with a Cop. We also had the officers teaching classes again and there were several of them including DARE, GREAT, and Internet Safety, just to name a few.

The officers see these events as a fun way to interact with the people they normally don’t get a chance to see. They enjoy answering the routine questions (“what is this” as the small child points to something on your fancy “utility belt”), and even the occasional bizarre question. I know that when I taught the Internet Safety classes to the 5th grade they had a lot of questions, but they were all very good. The goal of these events is to let the public (especially the children) know that we are not mean and that just because we wrote you (or your parents) a ticket doesn’t mean we don’t like you, we just have a job to do. We like to have these types of activities so people can get to know the officers and sometimes even their families. All the officers’ spouses helped with the Shop with a Cop program, which was a big hit for the 28 children that participated.

Officer Mitchell Shaw continued with distributing Guardian911 dialers that allow elderly people the ability to contact emergency personnel when they have fallen or can’t get to a phone. They are wireless devices that connect to your phone and when you activate it it dials 911 and then opens a line of communication through the device. Officer Shaw requested to take this job with him when he left to become the Sheriff of Barton County, however the officers of the Police Department will continue to provide assistance with the dialers whenever called upon.

In closing, I would like to thank the citizens of Lamar for participating in these events. If we didn’t have any participation we would not get to meet some of the people we see. Thank you all for coming last year and I hope to see you this year!