WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office) is pleased to feature Drexel University’s (PA) Department of Public Safety (DPS) as its “Community Policing in Action” Photo Contest winner for November 2021.

In October of 2020, DPS Sergeant Charlie Barone was brainstorming ideas to give back to local veterans during Thanksgiving. DPS, which maintains a friendly relationship with the vets, regularly donates clothing, food, and other things. “They served our country and for whatever reason, fell on hard times,” says Barone. “So, we try to make life a little easier for them. And, to show our appreciation, I thought that providing food for upcoming holiday meals would be a good idea.”

Through a collaborative effort, DPS partnered with Vito, the Sausage King of New Jersey and the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) Post 5579, as well as community members, to handmake sausages for the veterans to enjoy for months to come. In the winning photo, DPS officers John Joerger, Matt Richardson, Ryan Bennett, and Morgan Meehan are pictured with U.S. Navy Veteran Ronald Blakey at the campus Veterans’ Home.

View the winning photo on the COPS Office website, as well as on the COPS Office’s official Twitter profile and Facebook page. DPS’s commitment to community policing and its dedication to protecting members of the Drexel University campus and surrounding areas are also chronicled in the November 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 agency 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 135,000 officers.

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