Local law enforcement, and the Hays SRO team recently held ‘Coffee with a Cop’ with the Hays community and campus. In addition to coffee, donuts, muffins, and pan dulce, students took pictures with the policemen, and the drug dog stopped by. Students seemed thrilled to see all of the police department. There was many engaging conversations between both students and police.

Mohammed, the department’s mental health officer.

Mohammed said his job “is great, considering that it is hard for us to have interactions with the younger crowd, primarily ’cause we are running from door-to-door, calls for service, domestic violence, suicide calls, and mental health concerns. We don’t get a lot of time to have interactions. Like we are known for ONLY seeing you on your worst days, and people see us one their worst days.

He added, “There’s never really a good time to go get on terms, to meet us, or get to know us, besides having a crisis. So seeing coffee with a cop, or basically seeing cops in a non- authoritarian sense, that way you can break down their personalities, to get know if they are funny, get to know if they are awkward. So overall seeing coffee with a cop was a great experience for me.”

Mohammed said some students are hesitant to talk to law enforcement, and that is something the meet-up aims to change.

“I would tell them to branch out, and to reach out to any cops you see cause we aren’t going to deny talking to you. Or we aren’t going to deny any questions you might have for the police department. Obviously we don’t give legal advice, But what many action movies depict about how police are these scary people is not reality at all.”

The event gave the campus an amazing opportunity to meet their local law enforcement, and overall the coffee with a cop was an amazing experience for both cops and students to learn more about each other and learn more about each side of each persons story.

“So everybody’s human. Everybody has somebody to go home to, and everybody is going back to their own life,” said Mohammed. “A lot of police officers have a lot of experiences with things even you might be going through. So to even talk to a police officer about what you are going through, gives you a chance to get valuable advice.”