Bear Paw Credit Union Supports Shop With a Cop Program
January 31, 2017
Havre, MT - This community is wonderful and loves to help each other out. Our first responders protect our town day and night and they love their community. So it wasn't very hard to get Shop with a Cop started!
Laura M Eller, Financial Services Specialist for Bear Paw Credit Union and her husband, a police officer, started the program in their area. “The sponsors were so helpful and willing to help in any way they could,” said Eller. “I love coordinating this event and my credit union lets me help out for the day and donates money for the event. This is investing in our community, our children, our future, shopping with the kids and bonding with the future generation,” she adds.
Officer Jesse Eller says, “We know doing something like Shop With a Cop could be helpful and we know it is a program that is needed in the community. As law enforcement, sometimes you see the worst in the community – a lot of people don’t realize we have kids who are in poverty. A lot of people live behind closed doors or in their circle of friends and just don’t see some of the things we see.”
Shop with a Cop is an attempt to identify those kids in need and pair them up with a police officer in a positive situation, such as shopping for Christmas presents or shopping for school supplies. Behind the Shop with a Cop program is the idea to locate kids whose families have had some law enforcement contact with police. Sometimes this may involve an adult family member or older sibling who may have been arrested. The trauma of seeing a family member arrested can cause many young kids to have some very negative feelings towards police, as they rarely hear the whole story, objectively, from those involved. Focusing on children who have lost parents or experienced a family trauma, it aims to plant a seed of hope back into the hearts of those who have been recently devastated.
