Written By Patricia Rouzer
Forget the jolly fat man with the red suit, reindeer-powered sleigh and elf-equipped North Pole workshop. For some Carroll kids, Santa wears a uniform, totes a gun, drives a high performance car equipped with light bar and siren and shops at Wal-Mart.
The local children and their badge-wearing cohorts are part of the Shop-With-A-Cop (SWAC) program, a venture intended to help some disadvantaged families have a merrier Christmas while conveying to children the idea that police officers are there to help – a lesson that the law enforcement officials hope will endure far beyond the holiday season.
For the past five years the Westminster Police Department has participated in the program. The origins of SWAC are obscure. They range from 1978 in Las Vegas to a Utah Kmart in 1990. Regardless of where and how it started, it is active in cities throughout the United States. Hampstead has a similar project and Sykesville’s police force will do their first SWAC this year.
In Westminster, the children meet their Santa-cop at Wal-Mart for breakfast at the in-store McDonald’s. They shop to buy presents for family members, ride in a police car to a destination where they have lunch and wrap their gifts, and hopefully return home filled with an enduring “peace on earth” attitude.
It is a holiday recipe that worked well for Kevin Dorsey’s children, Raekwon, 13, and Heaven, 12, both students at Westminster East Middle School. Last year brother and sister came away not only with a reservoir of good will toward the city’s officers, but with a new appreciation for the joy of giving to others.
The way it works, when you are shopping with a cop, you do not buy for yourself, you buy for members of your family.
“It really has changed their attitude,” said Dorsey, a barber who works at Michael’s Barber Shop on the city’s Main Street. “They are much more giving toward others. They think more about giving and a little less about getting.”
For his daughter, Heaven, the experience was particularly exciting. “She’s wanted to be a cop for as long as I can remember,” said Dorsey. “She loves cops and she will watch cop shows on television as long as you’ll let her.”
To shop with a cop, ride in a police car and just hang out with those who protect and serve was beyond heaven for Heaven. Even her cool older brother got involved in the whole shopping thing when he had a police escort.
In the end, the children were able to give their father tee shirts, socks and a brand new pair of hair trimmers for Christmas.
Sgt. Keith Benfer, Community Education Officer for the Westminster Police Department, organizes SWAC for the city and regards it as one of the department’s best outreach programs.
“For many of these kids their only contact with police results from a domestic dispute in the neighborhood or a cop who gets after them for riding their skateboards in the street,” Benfer said. “This gives them a contact with police that is completely positive and it lets them see cops as humans who are friendly and happy to help.”
Benfer said he has no problem recruiting the requisite number of Santas each year from the ranks of Westminster’s 45 sworn officers and 11 civilian employees to escort the 25 or so juvenile shoppers.
“Officers on duty and those that are home asleep because they are scheduled for night duty can’t participate,” he said. “But I think everyone in the department would if they could.”
Many Santa-cops bring their families to the event and introduce them to their young shopping companions.
Long before the annual SWAC shopping spree, Benfer receives a list of potential participant families from the county Human Services agency. He selects a dozen or so Westminster families and invites them to participate in the program.
If a family agrees, a department representative meets them before the designated shopping day – this year it is December 12 – to learn about their family members and find out what they need. All funding for the program comes from individuals, businesses and corporate donors.
On the big day each child receives a $150 Wal-Mart gift card and shopping commences. Equipped with more buying power than many, if not all, these children have ever had, some may be tempted to lavish the loot on one big buy. Here is where sage advice from the law may pay dividends for other members of the family. And there are sometimes budgetary supplements.
“Some of these families have never had a really great Christmas,” said Benfer, “And it isn’t unusual to see one of our cops give kids money from their own pocket to help buy something special for their families.”
Upon completion of their shop-a-thon , kids pile their newly-purchased items into their shopping buddies’ patrol cars and head to the Westminster Senior Center for lunch and a wrap session. Then they return home with their presents to await Christmas day.
Although the kids have shopped for family members, they are not forgotten in the gift-giving. Wal-Mart has an “angel tree” on which store patrons pay to post greetings. Using proceeds from these sales and armed with information from their earlier conversations with family members, the cops have purchased and wrapped gifts for each young shopper and filled stockings with gift cards and small items donated by local merchants and fast food chains.
Before they return home, they are allowed to open their “big gift,” maybe a DVD player, bike or an Ipod that they asked for but thought they had no hope of receiving , Benfer said, adding, “If the community didn’t step up with donations to support this program, we couldn’t support it.”
“You know, especially in this economy, it means a lot to people to have a little Christmas,” he said. “The cops here are good. They get involved. It’s good for kids to have this kind of contact with them. It betters people.”
For Benfer and his colleagues, SWAC is the gift that truly goes on giving.
“Months after Christmas I saw one kid who told me, ÔBefore, I didn’t like cops” he said. “I thought they were mean. Now I know they are my friends.’”
