WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office) is pleased to feature the Delano (CA) Police Department (DPD) as its “Community Policing in Action” Photo Contest winner for March 2021.

The DPD’s officers wanted to put a spin on their planned Coffee with a Cop event by honoring a very essential group of community members: the Delano field farmers. Many DPD officers’ parents worked in the same fields, so they feel a special connection to these community members. The winning photo features DPD Officer Guadalupe Contreras enjoying coffee, doughnuts, and Mexican bread at a table shared with Delano community members during a Café con Campesinos (Spanish for “coffee with farm workers”) event.

Said DPD Officer Rafael Silva, “When planning our usual Coffee with a Cop at a Starbucks, we decided to change the name and take it to a vineyard, where the Spanish-speaking farmworkers are. They can’t come to us in town during the week, so we went to them, with lights and sirens on to make it a special occasion. We wanted to pay tribute to and honor our farm workers,” he added. “Because they are the most essential people in our community, the ones who put food on our tables.”

View the winning photo on the COPS Office website, as well as on the COPS Office’s official Twitter profile and Facebook page. MCSO’s commitment to community policing and the importance of embracing the multicultural members of its community is also chronicled in the February 2021 edition of the COPS Office e-newsletter, the Community Policing Dispatch.

The COPS Office is the federal component of the Department of Justice responsible for advancing community policing nationwide. The only Department of Justice agency with policing in its name, the COPS Office was established in 1994 and has been the cornerstone of the nation’s crime fighting strategy with grants, a variety of knowledge resource products, and training and technical assistance. Through the years, the COPS Office has become the go-to organization for law enforcement agencies across the country and continues to listen to the field and provide the resources that are needed to reduce crime and build trust between law enforcement and the communities served. The COPS Office has invested more than $14 billion to advance community policing, including grants awarded to more than 13,000 state, local and tribal law enforcement agencies to fund the hiring and redeployment of more than 134,000 officers.

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