Portland kids ‘Shop With A Cop’ for Christmas presents

When you’re a child during the Christmas season, it’s always frustrating to want to buy gifts for the adults in your life, but no means to get to the stores without those same adults driving you. It makes it hard to keep surprises.

Well on Wednesday afternoon, a select group of Portland kids were scheduled to get very special escorts for their Christmas shopping trip. Here’s the city of Portland’s description of the program, issued in advance of the occasion:

The Portland Police Department along with their police union, Police Benevolent Association, Target, and Portland Pie Company are sponsoring Shop With a Cop, an opportunity for children to do some holiday shopping with a local police officer. Ten children from more than one hundred applicants were selected based on their answer to the question “Why I want to go shopping with a police officer?” to be a part of the fourth annual holiday event.

The children will be picked up in a patrol car by a police officer at one of Portland Recreation’s after-school locations and taken to Target where they will have the opportunity to purchase gifts for their friends and family. The officer will accompany the child as they shop. Afterwards, the officers and children will return to the Portland Police Department to wrap their gifts. Portland Pie Company will provide pizzas.

Seth Koenig

About Seth Koenig

Seth has nearly a decade of professional journalism experience and writes about the greater Portland region.