Elkin Police Department participates in first Coffee with a Cop at Surry Community College with other Surry County Officers

By Beanie Taylor, Elkin Tribune
Original article HERE

Elkin Police Department Officer Newell Hauser joined other officers from throughout Surry County for the first local Coffee with a Cop event at Surry Community College on Saturday.

This national effort was started in 2011 in Hawthorne, California, as a way to, “interact more successfully with the citizens they served each day,” according to the website coffeewithacop.com. “The Hawthorne Police Department hit upon a simple plan to break through the barriers that have been built over the years — a cup of coffee.”

Although this program can be found in every state and even other countries, according to student organizer Maggie Hoilman, “[Saturday was] is the first time this has been done with Surry County officers.”

Elkin Police Department held its first Coffee with a Cop event in April of 2016 after Capt. Kim Robison learned about the program during a management class in Galax, Virginia.

“One of my main goals with implementing this program was to set building blocks of relationships with sponsors in place for departments to be able to build upon and expand this program and continue working with those sponsors,” claimed Hoilman, who would like to see the program continued on a monthly basis. “Sheetz expressed to us their desire to be a continuing sponsor for these events and to make available the use of their facilities to host them.”

Hauser enjoyed the event but stated he thinks it would be nice to do the county event no more than twice a year though, “it would be good to do one locally [within the town of Elkin] once a month.

“It can help people understand what happens with law enforcement and let people get to know their officers one-on-one,” acknowledged Hauser, who described Saturday’s event as, “mostly criminal justice students who were asking about what it was like to be an officer. There were also citizens there asking about what happens if you get arrested and procedures for doing an investigation. It was good for people who were just curious about law enforcement and how it works.”

The Coffee with a Cop website describes these interactions between officers and community members as, “[opening] the door for interactions outside of the crisis situations that typically bring law enforcement officers and community members together.”

“It seemed to me like it was a good thing,” alleged Hauser, who seemed very interested in seeing the program continue locally.

“We are hoping to make this event a regular occurrence,” stated Hoilman, who had the assistance of fellow student Emilio Lopez and faculty advisor Mary Burton in organizing Saturday’s activities which were sponsored by Sheetz in Dobson, Sheetz in Mount Airy, and McDonald’s 601 in Mount Airy as well as Surry Community College. “Moving forward with this event we hope to garner even more community support.”