By Sarah Stone

Smiles shine through aisles during Shop with a Cop

Dec 16, 2014 | 4:26 PM

The Prince Albert Canadian Tire saw an influx of kids on Tuesday afternoon.

As part of the annual Shop with a Cop, 25 students from various community schools around the city were picked up in the Raiders tour bus and brought to the store.  Each child received a $100 gift card from Crime Stoppers and an additional $15 from Canadian Tire.

To help them shop, a police officer was paired with each child for the afternoon.

Rick Switzer, vice-president Crime Stoppers, said they’ve been involved in this initiative for around five years.

 “It brings kids and police together and show police on a lighter side, an easier going side, they talk to the kids, they take them for lunch and they help them pick their presents and it’s a really, really nice situation,” Switzer said outside of Canadian Tire.

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He said watching the kids’ joy and excitement feels fantastic.

“It helps the community and build community relations,” he said.

“We really like the idea that the students; that the young kids feel that much more comfortable approaching a police officer,” added treasurer Ron Bird, who also attended the event.

It wasn’t just the kids that were smiling and laughing with excitement, many of the officers paired with them shared the enthusiasm as they tried to keep up with through the doors and into the store.

Police Chief Troy Cooper said it’s a nice day for police—and fun, on top of that.

He said he’s grateful the community clubs came together for this cause.

“The young people in our community are really important to us and they’re the future for the city first of all, but we also make sure that their first contacts with us are positive ones because it’s pretty rare someone can meet the police in a positive way and officers are busy and they don’t have the time to go out of their way to make that positive contact and this allows us to do that,” he said.

Troy said the kid he was shopping with as a “prince of a young man.”

“When I asked him what he wanted to buy and who he was buying for, it was all about other people.  He wasn’t thinking Christmas is for himself, he was thinking about his aunts and uncles and cousins and he has a list a mile long,” he said while his partner shopped in the Riders’ aisle.

Troy described the feeling officers get after the day as weird and overwhelming in a good way.

“You come home from work with an unusual feeling that you’ve been participating in a real positive way,” he said.  “This is a great day and a nice feeling for the officers.”

He said there are so many people in the community that give back, which is why he likes Prince Albert.  He adds those that do this may not see the positive results it leaves, but police do and it’s significant.

The group shopped ‘til they dropped throughout the afternoon and finished the day off sharing a meal at McDonald’s thanks to a donation from the Cosmo Club.

sstone@panow.com

On Twitter: @sarahstone84