Police officers in Denver, Colorado, and the Denver Police Foundation went on a unique kind of patrol recently.
The outing was a “turkey patrol,” not searching for turkeys but giving them to needy families who might have gone hungry over Thanksgiving, KDVR reported on Thursday.
Hundreds of delicious Thanksgiving meals, 1,000 exactly, were packaged by helpers with the DPD, AT&T, Walmart, and We Don’t Waste, ready for delivery to local families.
Video footage showed a mass of helpers bagging the holiday meals and placing them in long rows on the floor of a hallway:
“Really it’s our officers, they interact with the communities seven days a week, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. We get to see this need firsthand,” Denver Police Department Chief Paul Pazen explained.
Neighbor Keeyonna Dashiell has six children to care for, including 5-year-old Drayah, and the donation will make a huge difference for them.
“The cost for 1,000 Thanksgiving dinners? About $40,000, all donated. Add in the hundreds of hours of volunteer time, bake for approximately three hours and you have got one happy family,” the KDVR report said.
In a social media post on Friday, We Don’t Waste acknowledged the officers’ hard work in helping to provide food to so many neighbors in need of assistance.
“We put the Denver Police Department to work helping us provide thousands of Thanksgiving meal kits to the community!” the post read:
Additional video footage showed the officers going to residents’ homes and surprising them with the food:
“It helps out a lot. Donations, you know, it wouldn’t be possible without people caring, you know, so it does go a long way,” recipient Nichole Forte told CBS Denver.
According to its website, the focus of the Denver Police Department is to prevent crime and treat residents with dignity and respect each day.