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Thursday / January 30.
HomeCultureCommunity ReportingHPD goes ham with community engagement 

HPD goes ham with community engagement 

CAPTION: Hutchinson Police Officers congratulate Honorary Detectives Grace, McKenna, Sutton and Emerie from Mrs. Taylor’s Pre-K class at Morgan Elementary School. CREDIT HUTCHINSON POLICE DEPARTMENT

By Emmie Boese

Officer Kris P. Bacon is out in the town. His most recent appearance was at Morgan Elementary School this month. 

“We came up with that name,” Captain Dayton Gates with the Hutchinson Police Department said. “We thought we’ll poke fun at ourselves as cops because cops and pigs and stuff so it’s kind of just a fun poke

Officer Kris P. Bacon is a stuffed pig dressed up as a police officer. HPD is using Officer Bacon as a monthly engagement tool for elementary schools in Hutchinson and Buhler. 

“The whole point is to really have officers engage with the kids in a positive way,” Gates said. “You know it’s meant for elementary school kids.”

Gates, who oversees the project, said every month officers hide a stuffed animal pig in an elementary school in town. A flyer is then posted in the school to state that Officer Bacon is missing. Whoever finds Officer Bacon then tells their school’s front office or principal that he has been located. 

“Whomever finds him, they get to be recognized on social media if their parents allow it,” Gates said. “And regards to anything they get, they get a free lunch with officers and sometimes we’ve had just one student find it and other times we’ve had a whole class find Krispy so depending on what it is, we let them pick the meal they want and if it’s like a big class we obviously just go with like a pizza.”

Gates said Officer Bacon also spreads positivity as an engagement tool because elementary students may be learning more about what firefighters and police officers do. 

“It’s just kind of a thing that opens that door in a positive way instead of if we pull their parents over, they might find that negative or something like that,” Gates said.

Gates said Police Service Aid Rylee Patton with HPD is the person who is driving the project. 

“She’s the one that’s kind of pushing that out and she’s in all the photographs in everything so we’ve been doing that for a few months now and we’ve gotten a lot of good feedback on it,” Gates said. 

For more information and to see the monthly featured winners, go to HPD’s Facebook page. 

Latest comment

  • I absolutely love this, especially as it provides ongoing positive interaction between our officers and students! Thank you for covering this

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