Cop talk

By Paul Albani-Burgio, Fort Morgan Times
Original article HERE

A member of the Morgan County Sheriff’s Office meets with a local family during Wednesday’s "Coffee with a Cop" event.

Some Fort Morgan residents spent Wednesday morning sharing opinions with and asking questions to a group that many people try to avoid interacting with: area police officers. Officers from the Fort Morgan Police Department, the Morgan County Sheriff’s Office, the Log Lane Marshall’s Office and the Colorado State Patrol spoke with residents at the “Coffee with a Cop” event, which was hosted by McDonald’s.

“One of the advantages of being a department in rural Colorado is that people can get to know us and we can get to know them,” Colorado State Patrol Captain Gaylon Gippin said. “These kinds of interactions are something that’s valuable for both us and the community.”

The event was one of several such sessions that officers from the Fort Morgan Police Department have participated in since the department kicked off its own “Coffee with a Cop” program in February. However, it was the first such session where officers from several different area agencies were on hand to meet and speak with residents.

“I think McDonald’s is a pretty good place to do this because there’s a consistent crowd that comes in the morning for their coffee,” Fort Morgan Police Commander Jared Crone said. “It’s just a good way to meet several different people and be a sounding board to have people ask questions or give us comments about whatever it might be, law enforcement-related or anything-related for that matter.”

McDonald’s Director of Operations Hunter Sprague said the restaurant sponsored the event to provide a casual environment for residents to interact with officers.

“It’s been very relaxed,” Sprague said. “It’s a nice opportunity for people to go beyond the badge and see that these officers are members of the community just like they are.”

Crone had anticipated that attendees might want to ask him about concerns related to drugs, safety and traffic in their neighborhoods and the community as a whole but instead found those he spoke with to be more interested in just getting to know the officers.

“It hasn’t been so much a question of ‘hey we’ve got a problem here’ but just more of a general conversation,” he said.

Gippin said he has come to expect questions from residents about why they don’t see more highway patrol officers on the roadways.

“They don’t see a lot because there just aren’t that many of us,” he said. “In most places, the standard is one officer for every 1,000 people which means our workload is higher than people expect and it’s harder for us to do a lot of the proactive patrolling we would like to do and people may not see us out there.”