By Brandon O’Connor

Reporter

The annual Shop with a Cop event will be held Thursday, Dec. 22, 2016. Bainbridge Public Safety officers will partner with kids from families in need and treat them to a Christmas shopping trip at Walmart.

“We look at the application and what we’re looking for is who really needs it,” BPS director Jerry Carter said. “We try to look at the minimum income, how many kids they’ve got and how much they need it.”

This will be the fourth annual Shop with a Cop and gives BPS officers the opportunity to give back to their community.

“They just go shopping,” Carter said. “Most of [the kids] know what they want, and the ones that are too young to know what they want, the mother buys what they need and we go shopping for them.”

The application window closed last Friday at 5 p.m. and BPS plans to notify the selected families later this week or early next week. The goal is to help up to five families that are found to be in the most need.

“We do it every year to give back to the community, help the needy kids and make sure they have a good Christmas,” Carter said. “A lot of kids out there don’t have a good Christmas so we try to make sure they get what they need for Christmas.”