America Responds With Love helps police respond to traumatized children
By Kyle Carrozza, Staff Writer, The Times
Officer Claire Lang and Chief Jack Laufer show some of the new friends that will ride in patrol cars.
COATESVILLE – The city’s Police Department will have some new passengers in their patrol cars from now on, and these passengers will not require handcuffs.
Partnering with the nonprofit America Responds With Love, the police department will now carry teddy bears in their cars to be given out when officers respond to calls involving children.
Police Chief Jack Laufer said that America Responds With Love President and CEO Richard McDonough reached out to the police department to provide teddy bears to children who are affected by events as simple as car accidents to the more trying times such as child abuse or when parents are arrested in front of them.
“There are so many opportunities where law enforcement is put in a negative situation and the children have to view those negative circumstances,” he said. “Ultimately, the goal is to make it better for the kids.”
Laufer said that the teddy bears are a way of reaching out to children during these potentially traumatic events. He thinks that the program plays into the department’s philosophy of community policing.
“That’s obviously what you want to maintain and you want to try to nurture and foster, is that certain level of innocence at that age,” he said. “Could it potentially maintain and shape them for their future development? I would say yes.”
Sgt. Rodger Ollis, whose daughters helped select the bears, agreed.
“It does speak to our mission; we’re protectors,” he said.
