Police hand out safety tips along with muffins over coffee

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This article was published 04/11/2017 (2952 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There are a thousand and one ways to keep an eye on your house when you’re away.

Door bells come equipped with cameras, as do motion detector LED lights and any smart phone can be rigged up as a handy surveillance camera. You can get a ping if someone does so much as ring your doorbell.

Low tech tips range from trimming the first two feet at the bottom of your bushes; to spot feet if prowlers duck in your shrubbery.

“But the number one thing you can do is install motion detector lights front and back,” Const. Sean Donovan told a clutch of coffee drinkers at a St. James McDonald’s. “And plant something thorny under your windows.”

As the season’s first snow fall blanketed the city, half a dozen patrol officers with the Winnipeg Police Service held their second ‘Coffee with a Cop’ date, a charm offensive to promote friendly relations between the people who live in Winnipeg and the officers whose job is to protect them.

Donovan, a former military officer who joined the police service over a decade ago is originally from Saint John, New Brunswick, and he approached the date under the Golden Arches armed with the powers of his persuasive Maritime charm.

“And if someone comes up to you on the street and demands your wallet. Don’t hand it to them; it’ll only bring them closer to you. Toss your wallet over there,” said Donovan gesturing away. “And run in the opposite direction.”

And don’t be afraid to run out the back door if someone breaks in the front, he added. “There’s nothing inside that’s more important than your own safety.”

The constable kept Dennis and Virginia Stokotelny in conversation for a good half hour, engaging a middle-aged son and his mother at the next table over as well as an older man from The Rock.

Being a Maritimer, Donovan spotted the Newfoundland accent the moment John Martin entered the chat. “Yep, 30 years now,” Martin nodded, when asked where he was from (St. Johns) and how long he’d been in the ‘Peg. He and the Stokotelnys are regulars. “It’s people like us that make McDonald’s Number One for coffee,” Martin quipped.

“That was informative. He’s a good guy and he can talk about everything and anything,” Stokotelny said after the constable moved on to another table.

“They’ve impressed us,” he said, glancing around at the uniforms moving around, settling into the one single empty chair left at every table and chatting up perfect strangers.

The manoeuvre resembled the way Royals work events but without the formality.

Officers served muffins, and handed out little badge-shaped silver stickers that read “Winnipeg Police Rookie in Training.”

Like other customers, Stokotelny pronounced the event a success.

He and his wife are both retired and they drive over from their home in Linden Woods to the McDonalds on Portage Avenue in St. James every morning.

They had no idea why the place was filled with cops when they walked in Saturday but after the first muffin, they settled in happily to chat with the officers.

“The more visible they get, well, that’s probably better P.R. than almost anything else they could do,” Stokotelny said.

“We did one of these last month at the McDonalds on Portage (across from the downtown University of Winnipeg ),” said Patrol Sargent Phil Penner, explaining the concept came from the States, where one American police force started the ball rolling with a morning coffee break, to help the public get to know officers on a “different” level.

This was Winnipeg’s second Coffee with a Cop, Penner said. And the start of a series of similar events to be hosted across the city in coming months at chains like McDonalds and independents coffee shops alike.

“This way we get to know you and you get to know us. There are no speeches, There’s no agenda. It’s a great opportunity and at the last event we had people who saw the notice on Facebook or our tweets and came in from across the city,” Penner said.

“Some people told us they’d never met a police officer in their lives. They wanted a change to interact with us and they asked about safety and security tips, how to become a police officer and just general conversation,” Penner said.

Oh, and the coffee and muffins are free, a part of the charm.

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca