Students meet with police for ‘Coffee with a Cop’ in Clarksville

By Lee Erwin, ClarksvilleNow.com
Original article HERE

Nashville State Community College hosted ‘Coffee with a Cop’ Thursday, Feb. 27 with officers from the Clarksville Police Department (CPD).

CPD partners with area businesses to bring the community together with officers in a relaxed setting so the public has a better understanding of the officers and law enforcement. In return, the officers have a chance to interact with people on a one-to-one basis.

Brooklyn Freeman, a student at the college, helped organize the event.

“I usually do a paper, but I decided I wanted to do something worth a lot more for the community. My hope was really that officers could just get to know students and citizen,” Freeman said.

Freeman hopes the public can understand that police officers are real people with difficult jobs that want cooperation from the public.

Lieutenant Travis Filmore with Clarksville Police said he looks forward to events like ‘Coffee with a Cop.’

“A lot of times when we see citizens it’s usually at the worst moment when they’ve lost a loved one or been involved in a traffic accident, something bad is going on,” Filmore said. “This enables us to interact in a setting where nothing bad is happening and we get to communicate and share a laugh with each other. The public gets to see that we’re human and we’ve got a job to do so it’s great for the public to see us in this setting.”