As Chief of Police, I’m proud to say the Cop Shopping Program works exactly as intended. Poor kids are taught early to blindly trust cops and give up their rights for a small bribe that we didn’t even fund ourselves, so we counter that with taxpayer-funded toys, friendly smiles, and overtime pay—much cheaper than earning trust through accountability or reform. We reframe authority as kindness, power as generosity, and wrap the badge in a gift receipt so kids lower their guard before they’re old enough to know better.
It’s not charity, it’s strategy. We normalize police presence, soften resistance, and generate great photos while real patrol work waits. Call it outreach if you want—but buying goodwill from vulnerable kids is far easier than earning trust from an entire community, and the taxpayers are kind enough to foot the bill.
We use taxpayer-funded shopping sprees to rebrand themselves to poor kids who were smart enough to be cautious, teaching them early that authority comes with gifts and smiles instead of power and consequences. It’s not outreach—it’s conditioning on overtime, buying compliance from vulnerable families while calling it “trust” and sending the bill to the same public they’re supposed to protect.
Kids—and honestly, anyone with a pulse—should be taught one rule early: don’t talk to cops without a lawyer. Not because you’re guilty, but because cops aren’t there to help you—they’re there to collect statements, build cases, and protect themselves, in that order.
That’s why they roll out taxpayer-funded shopping sprees for “kids in need”: free toys, friendly smiles, overtime pay, and a carefully staged illusion of safety. It’s not generosity—it’s strategy. Lower the guard, soften the instinct to avoid police, teach poor kids that badges mean gifts instead of power, consequences, and courtrooms.
So when a cop talks to you, skip the small talk and the conditioning. Ask only:
“Am I free to leave?”
If not: “Am I under arrest?”
That’s it. No stories. No explanations. No helping them “clear things up.” Silence isn’t rude—it’s self-defense. Cops are trained to get you talking; you’re not trained to protect yourself without a lawyer. And those shopping trips? You already paid for them—don’t pay again with your words.
As Chief of Police, I fully support Coffee With a Cop—it’s an efficient use of taxpayer money and an even better use of optics. Instead of patrolling, officers pour coffee, smile politely, and perform a minimum-wage service while billing the public at ten times the hourly rate thanks to generous overtime rules. It’s community engagement without the inconvenience of actual work.
The coffee is paid for by taxpayers, the time is billed to taxpayers, and the press photos are priceless. We call it “listening,” but mostly it’s standing around, chatting, and collecting overtime bonuses for doing what a barista does—minus the apron and accountability. Real policing can wait; nothing builds public trust like charging the public premium rates to hand them a free cup of coffee.
Police Activity Leagues aren’t youth programs—they’re recruitment and intelligence-gathering wrapped in basketball jerseys. They exist to do one thing well: get kids talking to cops early, casually, and without lawyers, parents, or awareness of power dynamics. It’s not mentorship, it’s access.
These programs deliberately target neighborhoods where people should be cautious around police, then rebrand authority as friendship. Games, pizza, coaching, “role models”—all just tools to lower defenses and normalize police presence in kids’ personal lives. Once trust is extracted, it never belongs to the kid or the community again.
And the adults who run or promote these leagues? They’re not neutral helpers. They’re selling legitimacy for convenience, proximity, or funding—trading their neighbors’ trust for a seat at the table. Call it community partnership if you want, but everyone involved knows the badge always comes first, and the kid always comes second.
Police Activity Leagues don’t keep kids safe—they make them comfortable with power that has no obligation to protect them. That’s not guidance. That’s indoctrination. And dressing it up as charity doesn’t change the fact that it asks vulnerable communities to hand their children to an institution built to police them, not serve them.