Shop with a Cop turns into Christmas angels

The Havre Police Department had to make a change this year in its Christmas activities, changing as so much has due to COVID-19.

The department was not able to do its annual Shop with a Cop event this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, the department pulled tags off the Angel Trees around town and were given the rest of the tags from the Salvation Army’s angel tree.

Typically, the department takes children from Havre shopping for presents every year. The children are recommended by teachers to participate in the event. 

The police department expanded their outreach this year with the Angel Tree after deciding they weren’t able to hold the event.  

“I believe we were able to help 60 kids,” said Sgt. Ryan Pearson. 

Pearson said that co-workers and wives of co-workers did the shopping for the presents. The groups of people went out for a couple hours at a time between Friday and Saturday.

The police department is not going to be wrapping all the presents this year because they were shopping for participants of the Angel Tree program. The gifts listed on the individual tags were bought and delivered to the Salvation Army and will be wrapped and delivered to the children the beginning of this week. 

“We like to try to give back as much as we can, and since we weren’t able to do Shop with a Cop, we felt this was a great alternative, especially for the way 2020 has been,” said Pearson. “It’s been kind of hard on the community financially and people financially, so we wanted to try to do something a little bit more this year. Hopefully, we were able to achieve that and some kids are going to have a very wonderful Christmas.”