Monongahela: Coffee With a Cop set next week

By ERIC SEIVERLING

eseiverling@yourmvi.com

Residents in and around Monongahela will get to meet their local police officers and even share a friendly chat over a cup of coffee Wednesday.

The Monongahela Area Revitalization Corporation will hold its Coffee With a Cop event at 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. at Little City Coffee located at 418 W. Main St.

The event is part of the Coffee With a Cop national program, which started in California in 2011 in an effort to have citizens and police officers interact in a casual, friendly atmosphere. 

The event has been so popular it now takes place in Canada, Europe, Australia, Africa and Latin America. 

MARC began holding the event in 2017, and attending this year’s event will be officers from the Monongahela and Carroll Township police departments, the Washington County Sheriff’s Department and Pennsylvania state troopers.

“With all the officers out there and the new officers in town, we want to show how we appreciate everything they do,” said the event’s chairperson Sarah O’Brien. “It’s a way for the community and officers to get to know each other.”

Monongahela police Chief Kevin Harris said he’s encouraged by the event and the way the community supports the city’s police department.

“It’s a nice event MARC puts together,” Harris said. “It’s a different platform than when you get called to a complaint. We’re there not just for the purpose of being on a call.

“There will be kids there and adults there, so we walk into it without any expectation. We get asked ‘What made us want to become a police officer?’ to ‘Do you like driving the police car?’ We find these kind of events gives us the reinforcement that the community does support the police.”

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