Cops for Kids: two organizations, two different messages

As we continue to scrutinize Mooresville’s Cops for Kids, we can better understand just how improperly our organization was run by Police Chief John Crone by looking at how a similar organization operates. The comparison speaks volumes.

To disadvantaged children living in and around California’s Lake Elsinore Valley, Santa Claus wears a badge and carries a gun.

About 1,000 children who may have otherwise woken up to no presents under a Christmas tree last year stormed the Diamond minor-league baseball stadium in Lake Elsinore, California, where “the entire third base concourse was full of toys,” said Jason Brown, a member of the Cops for Kids board of directors.

He said that each child was able to choose two new toys that were either donated or purchased from Cops for Kids funds, which are raised by annual fundraisers and contributions from corporate sponsors, businesses and individuals. Santa Claus visited the children at the Stadium, and a local photographer was on hand, snapping complimentary photos of nearly 300 families with the jolly old elf. The sheriff’s department Explorers volunteered at the event, which Brown said ran plentiful of Santa’s favorite snack: cookies.

California’s Cops for Kids Christmas event hasn’t always been held at the Diamond, Brown said. Instead, in past years, Santa’s “sleigh and reindeer” was a caravan of patrol cars from the Lake Elsinore Police Department and Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, delivering Christmas gifts to the area’s disadvantaged children and elderly shut-ins.

But last Christmas, when requests for assistance doubled that of previous years, Cops for Kids had to find a more efficient way to serve the children, Brown said. “It’s a great program we have here,” he added.

The Cops for Kids program in California was created in 1995 by two sheriff’s deputies “who saw a need to help children at Christmas time,” states the Cops for Kids, Inc. website. The officers, while on routine patrol during the holiday season, would hand out gifts to disadvantaged children. (It was this story from the California organization’s website that Mooresville’s Cops for Kids copied, almost verbatim, the alleged story of its founding.)

Thirteen years later, Cops for Kids has grown into a year-round program that assists children, families and senior citizens in need of emergency funding for transportation to school or work, temporary shelters, clothing, and education expenses.

Cops for Kids “works directly with the school districts” for referrals of children to the program, Brown said. The Cops for Kids website includes a referral form, and people “can come in anytime” to the police station to refer someone to the program or request assistance themselves, Brown said.

He said that Cops for Kids – which is a 501(c)(3) – reviews each and every referral, conducts interviews and checks income “to make sure it’s not a bogus request.” The program has one paid employee – its executive director. All other helpers, including the involved officers, volunteer their time.

In addition to helping out with emergency funding and spreading holiday cheer to area children in need, Cops for Kids hosts Bingo games with seniors and holds a Christmas luncheon with those who are living out their days in retirement communities.

This past Christmas, Cops for Kids volunteers, along with sheriff’s deputies, sheriff’s department Explorers and members of a nearby high school choir ,“visited many of the valley’s senior homes,” reads the Cops for Kids website. “We went inside each home, as many as 20 of us brought Christmas gifts and cheer and sang Christmas carols.

“Thanks to the choir members and their awesome teacher … we actually sounded pretty good,” the website quips. “Cops for Kids volunteers and Sheriff's deputies are not necessarily known for their singing voices!”

California’s Cops for Kids has a simple mission: “to ensure all children, regardless of circumstances, are provided the basic necessities that all children should enjoy” and “to provide senior citizen outreach and assistance based on the individual needs of life.” It is a mission the California organization lives up to.

Compare that to the Mooresville Police Department’s Cops for Kids mission. Until a few weeks ago, the overall mission of our Cops for Kids program – as presented on the police department’s website – was verbatim (minus one sentence) that of the California Cops for Kids program. (See http://thegattonreport.blogspot.com/2008/06/cops-for-kids-still-more-questions-than.html). Under the standard used by the California Cops for Kids, the Mooresville version of the organization did virtually nothing in furtherance of the mission that was publicly presented via the Internet as its mission.

When confronted about that, Chief Crone removed the Cops for Kids page from the website and stated that neither he nor his two majors “have knowledge of approving this web page.”

“We are not incorporated, nor have we ever been, nor have we advertised that we are a 501C(3) charity,” Crone stated. “The Mooresville Police did not start their Cops for Kids until 1997 and no one is paid a salary. At one time we looked into applying for a 501C3 designation but we changed our mind and just left it under the police department.”

But if Cops for Kids was never intended to be a charity, what exactly was it supposed to be? What was its mission?

Since 2001, Cops for Kids has spent a majority of its “outreach” funds – raised through individual and business contributions, as well as an annual golf tournament – not to benefit underprivileged children in Mooresville, but to send the Mayor’s Youth Council and the Police Explorers on all-expenses paid trips to New York City; Washington D.C.; Pennsylvania; Pigeon Forge, Tenn. and Atlanta.

Mooresville’s Cops for Kids was supposed to be treating the Police Explorers to a 9-day trip to Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon this month, but according to Interim Police Chief Carl Robbins, that trip has been cancelled.

Crone has called the Cops for Kids trips “educational” and “learning experiences.”

Interim Town Manager Erskine Smith, answering questions on Crone’s behalf recently, said the purpose of Cops for Kids is not to assist underprivileged or disadvantaged children, as presented to the public on the police department’s website, but to “benefit the youth of the community and build relationships between the youth and police department.”

If that’s true, then the message that Cops for Kids is sending to the youth of our community is a troubling one at best: that to be worthy of building a relationship with our police – to be worthy of “benefiting” in our community – one must either be interested in politics (Mayor’s Youth Council) or in law enforcement (Police Explorers).

Such a message contradicts the original stated purpose of Cops for Kids and what our community has been led to believe the program stood for. Of a sampling of contributors contacted recently by the Report, most said that when they donated to this year’s Cops for Kids golf tournament, they thought their money would go to assist underprivileged children in the Mooresville community. And almost every contributor said they planned to write off their donation as a tax deduction because they thought Cops for Kids was a registered charity.

But they can’t write it off, and it isn’t a charity. Instead, Cops for Kids is a fund to send the Mayor’s Youth Council and Police Explorers on trips.

How are those children selected? “There is an application process handled through the high schools” for the Mayor’s Youth Council, said Mayor Bill Thunberg. When asked who makes the final decision of members, he said: “I think the council votes and elects officers too.”

Robbins said the Police Explorers program “is open to both males and females between the ages of 14 and 21” and uses an application process. “Their school work and any disciplinary issues are taken into consideration,” Robbins said, adding that the Explorers group “is limited to 25 active members.”

In California, the Explorers volunteer at Cops for Kids events. In Mooresville, the Explorers – along with the Mayor’s Youth Council – are the beneficiaries of Cops for Kids.

In California, needy children are given brighter Christmases. In Mooresville, politically connected children are given all-expenses-paid, out-of-state vacations with their friends.

In California, police officers volunteer their time to help with Cops for Kids … driving their patrol cars around the community one evening out of the year, for instance, to take gifts to disadvantaged children. In Mooresville, officers and their wives “chaperone” the all-expenses-paid vacations for the Mayor’s Youth Council and the Police Explorers.

The trips aren’t cheap. Cops for Kids spent $3,250 just to charter a bus to take the two groups – consisting of 22 students, including the police chief’s daughter and the former mayor’s granddaughter, along with a whopping 14 chaperones (seven officers and their spouses, including Crone and his wife) – to Washington D.C. for two days last year.

It’s troubling to many people who donated to Cops for Kids that their contributions were used so carelessly. What’s heartbreaking is to consider the number of children in our community who could have and should have benefited from those dollars but weren’t able to because influential families wanted to go on vacation, eat at seafood buffets and attend music concerts, baseball games and amusement parks.

In California, a photographer provides cost-free pictures with Santa to disadvantaged children. In Mooresville, a digital camera captures a group of girls around the “Hershey’s chocolate” characters at the Hershey, PA amusement park.

In California, police officers intervene early with at-risk children who may eventually develop disdain for law enforcement. In Mooresville, our police chief and interim town manager send the message to our youth that the only children worth reaching out to are the very ones whose parents are already connected … the kids who aren’t likely to cause too much “trouble” … and even if they do, the cozy relationships created with the police chief may mean that their misdeeds will go “overlooked.”

That is the message we’re sending to the youth of our community. And as long as that’s the case, we’ll continue to get what we’re asking for.