WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office) is pleased to feature the Maricopa County (AZ) Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) as its “Community Policing in Action” Photo Contest winner for February 2021.

In the winning photo, MCSO Sergeant Laketta Gunn-Roman is pictured with a child during an event honoring the 115th birthday of children’s book author Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, on March 2, 2019.

Along with other members of MCSO’s Community Outreach Division (COrD), Sgt. Gunn-Roman visited Taft Elementary School to commemorate the author’s birthday by reading Dr. Seuss stories to the children. But as soon as she entered the classroom, the child in the photo asked to sit with her.

According to Gunn-Roman, who is an eighteen-year veteran with MCSO, this was not an unusual occurrence. “A lot of minority girls gravitate to me when I’m in uniform, and I think it’s because I’m also a minority and a woman, and they can see themselves in me.”

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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