On Wednesday, the Kent State University Police Department worked to bring the community and police together in a relaxed setting with its “Coffee with a Cop” event.

“Coffee with a Cop” consisted of free coffee and cake, with people getting the chance to learn about and build a relationship with local police officers. 

“’Coffee with a Cop’ is just a nice event where our community can meet our officers in a relaxed setting and learn a little bit more about us and our department,” said KSU Police Sergeant Tricia Knoles. “Typically, we try to bring some supervisors out here so that they can meet some of our upper staff.” 

Students who attended were given a souvenir cup, along with choices of coffee, hot tea, hot chocolate and cake.

The KSU PD hosted the event in hopes of discovering more needs of the community and building relationships with community members. 

“We like to do this as not just a community outreach, so that we can actually talk to our students, see what the needs of our community is and so they can also meet us,” she said.

Knoles greeted and socialized with students along with other police officers and staff members.

“We’ve had a lot of people that wouldn’t typically meet our officers that have come to our events, ” she said. “We get to have a lot of conversations with our students, finding out more about them. The main thing is someday, if something were to happen that they would feel comfortable reporting,” 

One student explained she had never come in contact with any KSU PD officers before this event. 

“I’ve never had an encounter with them,” said senior computer engineering technology student Lameisha Caldwell.

After mingling with the officers at the event, Caldwell said it made her more comfortable to contact them if something happened.

“Rapport is very important, that’s how humans communicate,” she said. “We need to build rapport before we go ask for help.” 

Knoles explained the event used to take place at large locations with over 300 students in attendance. She said it wasn’t as beneficial as keeping it in a smaller, more intimate setting where they can have more personalized interactions with students and faculty. 

At the last event, they had roughly 80 faculty and students stop by. 

“This is just one of many events we do for our students, faculty and staff,” Knoles said. “At the beginning of the year, we had ‘Cookies with a Cop’ on the first day of school. We stand out by the Student Center just handing out free cookies for students on their first day of school and welcoming them.” 

Kylee Cole is a reporter. Contact her at [email protected].