California Police Chief- Fall 2013 CPCA_2017_Winter Magazine Final | Page 28

Cognac and Officer John Dixon, took the reins, and Coffee
with a Cop was born at a local McDonald’s. The program
focused on creating a neutral space where officers could
engage in one-on-one conversations with “no agenda and
no speeches.” Things usually associated with one-sided
police-community meetings.
Early on, the Department program received a substan-
tial grant from the US DOJ C.O.P.S., allowing Hawthorne
staff to create and travel around the country teaching the
day-long curriculum. The program grew rapidly with mea-
surable successes seen nationally, particularly in communi-
ties seeking healing and reestablishing trust post high-pro-
file use of force incidents. Coffee with a Cop is now in 16
countries, conducted in four different languages, and is the
largest community policing program in the world. This past
October 4th, the second annual ‘Coffee with a Cop’ National
Day was held, with approximately 1,500 events occurring
nationally and in four countries.
Community Affairs Unit Lieutenant Robbie Williams
captured the importance of trust between law enforcement
officers and communities in a recent discussion. “A police
officer should be able to ask a community member for a
glass of water and trust the person enough to come back
with untainted water,” he said. This level of trust can be
developed through programs such as Coffee with a Cop.
http://coffeewithacop.com/
ENHANCING REAL WORLD MOTORCYCLE
DRIVING SKILLS THROUGH ‘RIDE TO LIVE’
The Hawthorne Police Department has taken the
initiative in providing real world riding skills to their
motorcycling communities through their innovative ‘Ride
to Live’ program. This riding program came about after the
department’s tragic loss of two of their own – Motor Officer
Andrew Garton in 2011, and Motor Sergeant Leonard Luna
in 2013, killed in line-of-duty motorcycle crashes.
These losses galvanized the department to re-focus on
motorcycle safety, not only for their own but also for the
civilian riding community at-large. With motorcycle deaths
and injuries on the rise, the department took an approach
to help alleviate the problem at a fundamental level, the
skill level of the average rider. Short on lecture but long on
actual hands-on riding, ‘Ride to Live’ markedly improves
the basic rider skills of participants.