Grand Prairie Students 'Shop With A Cop' For School Supplies
GRAND PRAIRIE (CBSDFW.COM) - In less than one week, children in Grand Prairie will be heading back to school, and the police department is making sure that no student goes into their first day of classes without the proper school supplies. A handful of Grand Prairie's finest took kids shopping on Tuesday.
Police officers filled up 50 backpacks with school supplies and donated them to elementary schoolchildren -- some of the 2,500 kids on a school meal program, whose parents cannot afford to purchase extras. Plus, the officers took other kids on a back-to-school spending spree at Walmart.
Three fifth-graders and two first-graders came armed with school supply lists, and grabbed what they needed from a wide variety of pens, pencils, notebooks and more. The $500 supply donation came from the Grand Prairie Police Department, as a reminder that they are here for the community.
"That's the thing that's so great about our department," explained Det. Justine Ross, "from the top of our command staff to our detention center officers, there's just this overwhelming need to give back and serve the community."
"It's cool that people are taking their time out of the day to come shopping with us and partnering up," added fifth-grader Adit Mangong.
And, as it turns out, the giving spirit was infectious. Once the other shoppers and employees at the Walmart store in Grand Prairie saw what the police officers were doing, they also started making donations of school supplies for children in need this year.
Classes in the Grand Prairie Independent School District begin on Monday.
