police: saying thank you

image taken from here

This week I've been thinking about ways that myself and others could show more appreciation for law enforcement and all they do. Some of my ideas included the following:

-have kids make cards and deliver them to local agencies

-make giant donut cake and take it in on Saturday*

-gift cards to various places (Jamba Juice, Starbucks, McDonalds, etc.)**

-movie gift certificates

After thinking about it a little more, I realized that even bigger and better than making a card or giving a gift certificate, would be saying "Thank You". If each person could go out of their way to say thank you to one cop this week, that would be the best way to support law enforcement officers. There have been a few times where someone has very sweetly gone out of their way to say thank you to HF and it touched his heart deeply. He was reminded that not everyone and everything is bad out there. Just those two little words have a far reaching effect. It can improve the officer's bad day, it can bring a lot of happiness to their family who sometimes feel like they are the only ones that appreciate him/her. It can knit the community and the department together in more unity. Thankfulness has that effect. It causes people to feel more love and respect for their fellow man.

I've made it a goal to say thank you with my kids this week whenever we see an officer. They won't know that we are an LEO family, but they can't hear it enough from anyone. I think we'll make a few cards too. As far as I've been able to tell, our community does little in doing something for police week. There are police wife groups, but none that organize any sort of fundraising or community outreach programs. I am working on organizing something where people can drop off cards and other acceptable gifts of appreciation at certain drop off points so that they can then be delivered to departments and also to families of fallen officers or injured officers. How are you going to say thank you this week?

In blogland:  Mandy at Mommy Musings is posting a police poem each day this week during police week.

                               TGR (Texas Ghostrider) also has a lot of memorial related posts this week. Check them out.

*Just for your information, if you take treats to a police department, unless they know you, they will graciously accept and most likely toss it in the garbage as soon as you leave just for safety reasons. It's nothing personal.

**Giving a gift card to an officer is a nice gesture, but handing them cash is questionable. That could look like a bribe or something, you know? (bribes are a common practice in other places but not here) If you want to donate cash, see if your local PD has a fund, or look online to see how you can donate to the national memorial fund. See here for that.