West Mifflin ‘Santa cops’ wrap up holiday cheer

The police department also delivered toys to West Mifflin elementary students.

For the seventh annual year, the West Mifflin Police Department hosted its toy drive to help local children have a bright Christmas morning.

West Mifflin Police hosted its annual Santa Cop donation drive Friday at the Walmart in West Mifflin. West Mifflin Police

Every year, the police department partners with the West Mifflin Area School District to donate toys to every child in elementary schools within the district. This year, they had to meet a goal of enough toys for about 700 kids.

When the department started this drive in 2018, police Sgt. Ryan Sabol, who is in charge of the event, said they originally partnered with Froggy Radio.

“It started out handing out toys to a couple kids, it started off small, asking for donations and just going and handing out toys to kids that we pick out throughout the year that we weren’t sure how much they would get for Christmas,” Sabol said. “Since then, it’s spiraled into a whole new realm of toy giving.”

“We are buying toys for 700 kids, so it’s a big undertaking every year,” Sabol added. “This year is a little weird because Froggy Radio isn’t doing it this year, so we are going to carry on without them, and hopefully expand it. Every year we expand it a little bit more, and add a little bit more to it.”

From 4 to 9 p.m. Friday, residents flocked to Walmart in West Mifflin to support the toy drive, where they accepted donations of new unwrapped toys and monetary donations to try to make some area families have a special holiday season.

According to police Chief Gregory McCulloch, several people will go in and shop, or they will just donate money to the drive.

Donations throughout the holiday season were sent to the department’s location at 1020 Lebanon Rd. during regular business hours.

“It is becoming a regular thing in our police department, and most of the guys come in on their own time to help out,” Sabol said. “It’s a big undertaking, and even our dispatchers help out. But seeing the kids get the toys, it’s worth every second of it.”

Every year, they partner up with different individuals throughout the community and several organizations, who donated to the drive, including the West Mifflin Community Foundation, U.S. Steel, Shults Ford, Kennywood and Walmart.

“Pretty much any place we can get donations from, we take because we are shopping for a lot of kids, and we purposefully do that so no kid is left out,” Sabol said. “There is no kid, regardless of financial status or anything, doesn’t matter rich or poor, every kid in the district gets a toy from the police department.”

The police department visited Clara Barton Elementary to deliver the first round of presents to about 250 students on Wednesday. They will go to Homeville Elementary on Monday to deliver gifts to about 450 kids.

“We do that every year,” McCulloch said. “We’ve been doing this for a lot of years now. It’s really nice because over in the Homeville area, you should see how (the kids) act. It’s actually just heartwarming every time they come into this gym. Sometimes it’s just overwhelming for the kids. They run back and forth, and some kids know exactly what they want. It just shocked me last year how many kids took stuffed animals.”

According to Sabol, they bring the toys in, set them up, each classroom comes in one at a time and they pick out their own toys.

Sabol said the department is hoping to keep that trend going, and to possibly expand into other school districts and communities, which has been a discussion for the past two years, and to set up a website so people can safely donate online.

He added that he loves doing this for the kids every year, when the kids come in to see the toys, their faces just light up with joy, and it is a lot of fun every year.

“It’s awesome seeing the kids walk in, and realizing they get to pick a toy, and they don’t have to pay for it,” Sabol said. “It does ruin their day because they are going to want to play with their toy, and not learn anything. For some of these kids, this is all they are going to get this year. Unfortunately, we’ve come to that realization that for some of these kids, this is going to be their Christmas.”